But everything animate in the camp was now focused on their advent. The old men of wisdom, the half-naked bucks, squaws, dogs, ponies—it was a shifting, interminably twisting kaleidoscope of gaudy, draggled, vociferous creatures.
A little dry laugh issued from Jerry's lips, and he grunted: "Some circus, Bulldog. Keep an eye skinned that those two skulking Frenchmen don't slip from a tepee."
Standing Bear stood in front of his tepee. He was a big fine-looking Indian. Over his strong Sioux-like features hovered a half-drunken gravity. In one hand he held an eagle's wing, token of chieftainship, and the other hand rested suggestively upon the butt of a.45 revolver.
Carney knew enough Stoney to make himself understood, for he had hunted much with the tribe.
"Ho, Chief of the mighty hunters," he greeted.
"Why does the Redcoat come?" and Standing Bear indicated the Sergeant with a sweep of the eagle wing.
"We come as friends to Chief Standing Bear," Carney answered.
"Huh! the talk is good. The trail is open: now you may pass."
"Not so, Chief," Carney answered softly. "Harm has been done. Two white men, with evil in their hearts against the police of the Great White Mother, whose children the Stonies are, have wounded one of her Redcoat soldiers; and also the White Mother has sent a message by her Redcoat that Standing Bear is to take his braves back to the reserve."
At this the bucks, who had been listening impatiently, broke into a clamor of defiance; the high-pitched battle-cry of "hi-yi, yi-yi, yi-hi!" rose from fifty throats. The mounted braves swirled their ponies, driving them with quirt and heel in a mad pony war-dance. Half-a-dozen times the lean racing cayuses bumped into the mounts of the two white men.