ther
instant still, and, with one motherly arm twining about the quivering,
panting, pleading girl and straining her to the motherly heart, Mrs.
Hay's right hand and arm flew up in the superb gesture known the wide
frontier over as the Indian signal "Halt!" And halt they did, every
mother's son save Kennedy, who sprang to the side of the girl and faced
the men in blue. And then another woman's voice, rich, deep, ringing,
powerful, fell on the ears of the amazed, swift-gathering throng, with
the marvellous order: "Stand where you are! You shan't touch a hair of
her head! She's a chief's daughter. She's my own kin and I'll answer for
her to the general himself. As for you," she added, turning now and
glaring straight at the astounded Flint, all the pent-up sense of wrath,
indignity, shame and wrong overmastering any thought of prudence or of
"the divinity that doth hedge" the commanding officer, "As for you," she
cried, "I pity you when our own get back again! God help you, Stanley
Flint, the moment my husband sets eyes on you. D'you know the message
that came to him this day?" And now the words rang louder and clearer,
as she addressed the throng. "_I_ do, and so do officers and gentlemen
who'd be shamed to have to shake hands with such as he. He's got my
husband's note about him now, and what my husband wrote was this--'I
charge myself with every dollar you charge to Field, and with the
further obligation of thrashing you on sight'--and, mark you, he'll do
it!"

CHAPTER XX

THE SIOUX SURROUNDED

In the hush of the wintry night, under a leaden sky, with snowflakes
falling thick and fast and mantling the hills in fleecy white, Webb's
column had halted among the sturdy pines, the men exchanging muttered,
low-toned query and comment, the horses standing with bowed heads,
occasionally pawing the soft coverlet and sniffing curiously at this
filmy barrier to the bunch grass they sought in vain. They had feasted
together, these comrade troopers and chargers, ere the sun went
down,--the men on abundant rations of agency bacon, flour and brown
sugar, found with black tailed deer and mountain sheep in abundance in
the captured village, and eked out by supplies from the pack train,--the
horses on big "blankets" of oats set before them by sympathetic friends
and masters. Then, when the skies were fairly dark, Webb had ordered
little fires lighted all along the bank of the stream, leaving the men
of Ray's and Billings' tr