ning the sign language at that
time and I couldn't get very far with him, but I made him understand
that I gave his life back to him. He left me at last and returned to the
tribe. Thereafter, every redman I met called me friend, and patiently
sat while I struggled to learn his language. As I grew proficient they
told me things they had concealed from all white men. I ceased to be an
enemy. I became an adviser, a chief."

"Did you ever see the old man again?"

"Oh yes. He was my guide on several hunting expeditions. Poor old Siyeh,
he died of small-pox. 'The white man's disease,' he called it, bitterly.
He wanted to see me, but when he understood that I would be endangered
thereby, he said: 'It is well--I will die alone; but tell him I fold my
hands on my breast and his hand is between my palms.'" The soldier's
voice grew hard and dry as the memory of the old man's death returned
upon him.

Elsie shuddered with a new emotion. "You make my head whirl--you and the
night. Did that determine your course with regard to them?"

"Yes. I resolved to get at their hearts--their inner thoughts--and my
commanders put me forward from time to time as interpreter, where I
could serve both the army and the redman. In some strange way all the
Northwest tribes came to know of me, and I could go where few men could
follow me. It is curious, but they never did seem strange to me. From
the first time I met an Indian I felt that he was a man like other
men--a father, a son, a brother, like anybody else. Naturally, when the
plan for enlisting redmen into the cavalry came to be worked out, I was
chosen to command a troop of Shi-an-nay. I received my promotion at that
time. My detail as Indian agent came from the same cause, I suppose. I
was known to be a friend of the redman, and the department is now
experimenting with 'Curtis of the Gray-Horse Troop,'" he added, with a
smile. "Such is the story of my life."

"How long will you remain Indian agent?"

"Till I can demonstrate my theory that, properly led, these people can
be made happy."

"I am afraid you will live here until you are old," she said, and there
was a note of undefinable regret in her voice. "I begin to feel that you
really have a problem to solve."

"It lies with us, the dominant race," he said, slowly, "whether the red
race shall die or become a strand in the woof of our national life. It
is a question of saving our own souls, not of making them grotesque
caricatures of