Her joking helped to clear his brain, though his blood was throbbing in his ears.
"Ah! I'm glad to know all that. Will you tag each anomalous hump?"
"Certainly. You will recognize everything by number or otherwise." She turned a suddenly serious face upon him. "I am determined to get back to work. These last few days have been so exciting. Is there any news?"
"Yes. The murderer proclaimed himself at a big council last night."
"He did! Oh, tell me about it! When?"
"I don't know exactly the hour, but the chieftains came to me about nine o'clock. I know him well; he is a reckless, handsome, half-crazy young man—" He broke off suddenly as Heavybreast, one of the policemen, profoundly excited, darkened the door-way. "Cut Finger is on the hill," he signed, and pointed away with trembling finger to a height which rose like a monstrous bee-hive just behind the school-house. On the rounded top, looking like a small monument on a colossal pedestal, sat a mounted warrior.
"What is he there for?" asked Curtis.
"He wants to die like Raven Face. He wants to fight the cowboys, he says. He don't want to hurt any one else, he says; only the cowboys and their war chief, so he says."
"Where is Crow? I want this man arrested and brought to me."
"Now he will shoot any one who goes up the hill; he has said so. All the people are watching."