n soldier and born engineer,
was going forward with his little fortress.

Trenches were cut, the logs were ended up--taller pickets than any one
of that country ever had seen before. A double row of cabins was built
inside the stockade. A great gate was furnished, proof against
assault. A bastion was erected in one corner, mounting the swivel
piece so that it might be fired above the top of the wall. A little
more work of chinking the walls, of flooring the cabins, of making
chimneys of wattle and clay--and _presto_, before the winter had well
settled down, the white explorers were housed and fortified and ready
for what might come.

The Mandans sat and watched them in wonder. Jussaume, the French
trader, shook his head. In all his experience on the trail he had
seen nothing savoring quite so much of preparedness and celerity.

Among all the posts to the northward and eastward the word went out,
carried by dog runners.

"They have built a great house of tall logs," said the Indians. "They
have put the thing that thunders on top of the wall. They never sleep.
Each day they exercise with their rifles under their arms. They have
long knives on their belts. They carry hatchets that are sharp enough
to shave bark. Their medicine is strong!

"They write down the words of the Mandans and the Minnetarees in their
books. They are taking skins of the antelope and the bighorn and the
deer, even skins of the prairie-grouse and the badger and the
prairie-dog--everything they can get. They dry these, to make some
sort of medicine of them. They cut off pieces of wood and bark. They
put the dirt which burns in little sacks. They make pictures and make
the talking papers--all the time they work at something, the two
chiefs. They have a black man with them who cannot be washed
white--they have stained him with some medicine of their own. He makes
sounds like a buffalo, and he says that the white man made him as he
is and will do us that way. We would like to kill them, but they have
made their house too strong!

"They never sleep. In the daytime and in the nighttime, no matter how
cold it is, one man, two men, walk up and down inside the wall. They
have carried their boats up out of the water--two boats, a great one
and two small. All through the woods they are cutting down the
largest trees, and out of the straight logs they are making more
boats, more boats, as many as there are fingers on one hand. They have
axes that cast muc