Sleeping Thunder's camp was only one of many gathered together that day in the Fort Macleod country, where the Indians were to meet the Queen's officials to make a treaty. Hector's division was there on escort duty.
The years had brought swift and sweeping changes. To-day Hector was a senior sergeant, though still in the early twenties, knowing his work inside out, intimate with the red men, an expert catcher of criminals and particularly of whiskey-traders, his special game. Honest, hard, dangerous work had put the triple chevrons on his arm. And drawing nearer every day, though still a dreary distance off, the first faint flashes of the higher light he sought were slowly opening before his eyes.
The Police had wrought great things in the few years behind them. The whiskey traffic had been much reduced and the old system of trading posts was gone, entirely and forever. The effect had been to convert the Indian to ways of peace. This in turn had brought the settler in who, up till now, had barely dared to show a timid nose in the country south of the Red Deer. Already the plains were dotted with homesteads, and cattle roamed along the grass lands soon to become tenanted by the immense herds of prosperous ranches. More settlers and more settlers were pouring out from the East. Before they could be accommodated, some title to the lands they wanted must be given them. The red men claimed the whole of the Northwest Territories. They were willing to relinquish them in return for certain privileges. So treaties were made with the great tribes in turn. And now the tribes of the Macleod district had come together to make their treaty too.
III
"You have a love for our ways and an interest in our customs?" asked Sleeping Thunder. "You admired our warriors?"
"Yes," Hector answered.
They were standing with Moon outside the chief's teepee on the last day of the treaty celebrations.
"Would you like to see more of them? You have not really seen us until you have seen the Sun Dance, which we hold each year in the summer."
"I want to see much more," said Hector. The romance of the things he had recently witnessed had fascinated him. "I would like to see the Sun Dance."
"Then hear me. If you do not mind camping with Indians, come to us next year and I will show you. I will teach you all our practices, our stories and legends and more of our language. It is too late this year, but next year—. I will send a messenger to tell you where to come and when. I would like you to come—and so would Moon."