"What are Dog soldiers?" inquired Rob.
"Why, the young bucks of a tribe who will not obey the orders of their chief; renegades who will not be controlled by any custom. Those Indians who have not done anything yet to make them warriors, and who go off on their own hook to murder and steal, and to fire the cabins of the poor settlers, thinking that if they can get a few scalps of women and children they will be recognized by the rest of the tribe as braves. Sometimes there are 'Squaw-men' among them, that is, white men who have married Indian women; generally bad men who have committed some crime where they used to live and dare not go back to where they came from."
"Who is Charley Bent?" asked Rob. "That is not an Indian name, surely!"
"I know it isn't," answered Joe. "He's a half breed; half white and half Cheyenne. His mother was a Cheyenne squaw, and his father was Colonel Bent, one of the most celebrated frontiersmen of his time. Charley was well educated in St. Louis, but when he returned to his father's home, at Bent's Fort, way up the Arkansas River, in what is now Colorado, he threw off the white man's dress and manner of living, joined the Indians, and became, in his devilishness, the worst savage to be found in the whole Indian country. The United States Government has offered a thousand dollars for him, dead or alive. Somebody will catch him yet; the army scouts are after him red hot, so the Pawnees told me."
"I wish the Pawnees, lots of 'em, were back on the creek, Joe," said Rob, continuing the lively conversation they had been keeping up ever since they started from the ranche; "wouldn't they like such a chance to go after their old enemies?"
"I expect they will be here sooner than usual, this coming autumn; one of the boys told me so when the band left; but it will be four months yet before we may look for them."
"Are you going to ask to go with the party to the Elkhorn, Joe?" asked Rob of his brother.
"No, I think not. I intend to be still unless some of the crowd drop a hint they'd like to have me along; then I'll speak out."
By four o'clock the boys returned to the ranche, having warned twelve families of the impending danger. All the men expressed their readiness to go with Mr. Thompson and the others to circumvent the savages on their raid. When Joe and Rob had turned their ponies out to graze and went back to the house again, they found a dozen men there already, waiting for the return of their father and the stranger. The anxious group sat on the veranda, discussing the state of affairs, suggesting to each other what course should be pursued concerning those settlers who would have to remain in the valley with their wives and children. Uncle Dick Smith, as he was familiarly called, an old man with white hair and long white beard, who had had some experience with the savages in his earlier days in Wisconsin, suggested that while the scouting party were absent, Job Wilkersin's stone corral would be the best place for the settlers to rendezvous in case the Indians came down into the valley of the Oxhide. After some discussion, however, it was agreed to let the question remain open until Mr. Thompson and the other men should arrive.
A short time before sundown a group of horsemen could be seen coming down the trail from the north. They were those for whom the crowd at Errolstrath were anxiously looking. When they rode up to the house, headed by Mr. Thompson, they dismounted, fastened their horses to trees, and after a hurried meal which the girls had been getting ready during their father's absence, they all adjourned to the lawn outside of the veranda, and the subject was renewed as to what those should do who were compelled to remain behind on the Oxhide. Mr. Wilkersin was among them, and as he stated his house was the largest in the neighborhood, and his big stone corral a grand place for defence in case the savages continued on their raid, it was agreed to rendezvous there. Twenty determined men in the corral could keep off a hundred Indians, and besides there was food enough at his house for every one who should go there. He further said that he would be glad to assist his friends thus much in trying times like these.