camp of some ten or a dozen Indians.

The Indians at hand were a guard over several white soldiers, and to his
intense surprise the young captain recognized some of Lieutenant
Carrol's men.

"What are you doing here?" he asked.

"Had a mix-up and came off second best----" began one of the soldiers,
when an Indian guard clapped a dirty hand over his mouth and ordered him
to be silent, under penalty of death.

Then the captain was taken to another part of the glade, and here he was
made a close prisoner by being bound, hands and feet, to the trunk of a
blasted tree.

Red Wolf wished to know what the captain had been doing away from the
fort.

"I've been on a hunting expedition."

"Alone?"

"No."

"Where are the others?"

"Safe, by this time. What do you intend to do with me, Red Wolf?"

"White Ox shall decide that," grunted the red man.

"Then he is on this hunt, too?"

"He is."

"When will he be here?"

"Soon."

"Don't you know that I am an army officer, and that you are laying up a
good deal of trouble for yourself by making me a prisoner?"

"The white man has not treated the Indians right."

"This is no way to redress wrongs, Red Wolf. Why don't you go to Colonel
Fairfield and make a complaint? He will send the story to the Great
Father at Washington."

"The Great Father will not listen. We have sent many complaints--as the
white captain knows."

"He will listen--if the complaint is a just one. The trouble is, the
Indians will not obey Colonel Fairfield's orders."

"And why should they obey the white man? Is not White Ox their chief?"

"That is true. But the land is now the white man's, and the Indians must
obey the Great Father at Washington, or in the end it will go hard with
them."

"Not so!" cried Red Wolf savagely. "In the end the white man will be
driven eastward, where he belongs. No one shall rule in these mountains
but the red man. White Ox and the other great chiefs have spoken."

"What! you are going on the warpath?"

"The hatchet may be dug up, if the white man will not listen to the red
man."

"I know what the trouble is, Red Wolf. Matt Gilroy and that scoundrelly
half-breed, Mose, have set you up to this. They have filled your ears
with false stories about our cruelty and about much money at the fort."

By the look on the Indian's face the young officer saw that he had
struck the truth, at least in part.

But the red man would talk no more, fearing he had already sa