Watch things on this front, Field, while
I make the rounds and see how we came out."

"All serene so far" it was! Not a man hurt. Two of the sorrels had been
hit by flying bullets and much amazed and stung thereat, but neither was
crippled. Bidding their guards to dig for water that might soon be
needed, Ray once more made his way to the northward side and rejoined
Field and Winsor.

In an almost cloudless sky of steely blue the sun had just passed the
meridian and was streaming hotly down on the stirring picture. Northward
the ridge line and the long, gradual slope seemed alive with swarms of
Indian warriors, many of them darting about in wild commotion. About the
little eminence where Stabber and the Fox had again locked horns in
violent altercation, as many as a hundred braves had gathered. About the
middle knob, from whose summit mirror flashes shot from time to time,
was still another concourse, listening, apparently, to the admonitions
of a leader but recently arrived, a chieftain mounted on an American
horse, almost black, and Ray studied the pair long and curiously through
his glasses. "Lame Wolf, probably," said he, but the distance was too
great to enable him to be certain. What puzzled him more than anything
was the apparent division of authority, the unusual display of discord
among the Sioux. These were all, doubtless, of the Ogalalla tribe, Red
Cloud's own people, yet here were they wrangling like ward "heelers" and
wasting precious time. Whatever his antecedents this new comer had been
a powerful sower of strife and sedition, for, instead of following
implicitly the counsels of one leader, the Indians were divided now
between three.

True to its practice, the prairie wind was sweeping stronger and
stronger with every moment, as the sun-warmed strata over the wide,
billowing surface sought higher levels, and the denser, cooler current
from the west came rushing down. And now all sounds of the debate were
whisked away toward the breaks of the South Shyenne,[*] and it was no
longer possible for old Sioux campaigners to catch a word of the
discussion. The leaves of the cottonwoods whistled in the rising gale,
and every time a pony crossed the stream bed and clambered the steep
banks out to the west, little clouds of dun-colored dust came sailing
toward the grove, scattered and spent, however, far from the lair of the
defence.

[* Oddly enough, that method of spelling the river's name became
official.]