“Well, well?”
“You start there and follow the fence to the corner—the left corner, towards the river. Then you follow the side that's nearest the river down to the other corner. Now that corner is about a hundred yards from the bank. You take a bee-line to the bank and go down stream, maybe thirty yards. No; it'll be forty yards, I guess. There's a lone pine-tree right agin the edge.” The wagon-master stopped.
“I see all that,” said Lieutenant Balwin, screwing the field-glasses. “There's a buck and a squaw lying under the tree.”
“Naw, sir,” drawled Cutler, “that ain't no buck. That's him lying in his Injun blanket and chinnin' a squaw.”
“Why, that man's an Indian, Cutler. I tell you I can see his braids.”
“Oh, he's rigged up Injun fashion, fust rate, sir. But them braids of his ain't his'n. False hair.”
The lieutenants passed each other the fieldglasses three times, and glared at the lone pine and the two figures in blankets. The boy on the ambulance was unable to pretend any longer, and leaned off his seat till he nearly fell.
“Well,” said Balwin, “I never saw anything look more like a buck Sioux. Look at his paint. Take the glasses yourself, Cutler.”
But Cutler refused. “He's like an Injun,” he said. “But that's just what he wants to be.” The scout's conviction bore down their doubt.
They were persuaded. “You can't come with us, Cutler,” said Powell. “You must wait for us here.”