ing trip just now."

"Don't put too much importance on these little scraps, Major. Yellow
Hand is always getting into trouble. He's quarrelsome."

"I'd disarm a few of these reckless young fellows if it would do any
good."

"It wouldn't. They'd simply borrow a gun of some one, and it won't do to
disarm the whole tribe, for if you do these cowboys will swarm in here
and run us all out."

"Well, caution every one to be careful. I'm particularly anxious just
now, on account of our visitors."

"I don't think you need to be, Major. You take your trip with your
friends. I'll guarantee nothing serious happens down here. And as you
are not to leave the reservation, I don't see as the department can have
any roar coming."

Nevertheless, it was with some misgiving that Curtis made his final
arrangements for the start. Crane's Voice and Two Horns had interested
Elsie very much; therefore he filled their places with other men, and
notified them to be in readiness to accompany the expedition, an order
which pleased them mightily. Mary, the mother of Crane's Voice, was to
go along as chief cook, under Jennie's direction, while Two Horns took
general charge of the camp.

Elsie burdened herself with canvases. "I don't suppose I'll paint a
picture while I'm gone, but I'm going to make a bluff at it on the
start," she said, as she came out and took her place with the driver
amid the mock lamentations of Lawson and Parker and Jennie.

"Can any of you drive--no!" replied Elsie, in German fashion. "Then I am
here."

"I like her impudence," said Lawson.

As they drove up the valley, Curtis outlined his plan for using the
water on a huge agency garden. "I would lay it out in lots and mark
every lot with the name of a family, and require it to be planted and
taken care of by that family. There are sites for three such gardens,
enough to feed the entire tribe, but so long as a few white men are
allowed to use up all the water nothing can be done but continue to feed
the Tetongs in idleness, as we are now doing."

As they rose the grass grew greener, and at last Elsie began to discover
wild roses growing low in damp places, and at noon, when they stopped
for lunch, they were able to eat in the shade of a murmuring aspen, with
wild flowers all about them. The stream was swift and cold and clear,
hardly to be classed with the turbid, sluggish, discouraged current
which seeped past the agency.

"It is a different world up here," Els