"Lean Bear didn't show any alarm or surprise when the hungry, snow-blind, travel-weary representative of the white man's law confronted him, but just greeted him with the Indian's usual 'How!' and invited him into shelter.
"'The Red Coat has been on a long and lonesome trail,' he said. 'Lean Bear welcomes him as a friend. We will eat together. We will smoke the pipe of peace. It is well.'
"He had food in plenty, but Corporal Pretty John wouldn't touch it before he had made the Indian clearly understand that he was arrested for the grave crime of taking the life of a white man, whereupon Lean Bear permitted himself to smile with satisfaction.
"'Lean Bear has no need to be told,' he declared. 'It is true that he has taken the scalp of his enemy. It is great medicine, and he is glad. His heart is light, it is not heavy with sorrow for the death of such a bad man. He has done what he has tried to do during four winters. He has done it, and he is happy. He will take his punishment. He is ready to die when his white friends will that he should no longer live.'
"So earnestly did he insist on his willingness to pay the full penalty for his crime that the Corporal began to suspect some cunning trick, some subtle Redskin treachery.
"You will agree that it wasn't a comfortable situation for a trooper to be in. You see, it would have been so easy in that lonesome, desolate place for the Indian to overpower a man weakened by privation. Lean Bear was already a murderer, and one crime more wouldn't have disturbed his conscience. He would never have been found out.
"You may be sure that Pretty John kept his revolver handy in case of necessity. But if Lean Bear intended violent mischief he was certainly very slow in bringing it off. He made no attempt to rebel against his arrest, and was only silent and thoughtful. He wore no handcuffs. They were not needed. He just rode beside the Corporal, never lagging, never trying to escape, although he might easily have done so as they crossed the open, wind-swept stretches of snowy prairie, or at night when his captor was asleep.
"On the second day that they were together, misfortune overtook them. They lost their way in a wild and merciless blizzard. There wasn't a rock or a bank anywhere for miles around to afford them shelter; all about them was nothing but unbroken, trackless prairie, under its covering of frozen snow that the wind caught up and flung into their faces, cutting them like knives. The sky above was shut out by the fiercely swirling clouds of icy particles that fought with fiendish anger.
"'Bad medicine!' declared the Indian in a momentary lull, and as the storm grew worse, the closer he kept to the side of his morose and silent warder.
"It was as much as Pretty John could do to keep his saddle, the bridle reins hung loose from his numbed fingers. He could only sway to and fro under the cover of his blanket, now bracing himself to sit up straight, now falling sleepily forward over the neck of his jaded broncho; and it vexed him all the more to know that while he was getting gradually weaker and weaker, his prisoner was riding upright and unconcerned, never wavering, but only keeping closer to his side, knee to knee.