ream bed trended, and,
following the pointing finger of the scout who crawled to his side, Dean
gazed and saw a confused mass of slowly moving objects, betrayed for
miles by the light cloud of dust that hovered over them, covering many
an acre of the prairie, stretching far away down the vale. Even before
he could unsling his field glass and gaze, his plains-craft told him
what was slowly, steadily approaching, as though to cross his front--an
Indian village, a big one, on the move to the mountains, bound perhaps
for the famous racecourse of the Sioux, a grand amphitheater in the
southern hills.

And even as they gazed, two tiny jets of flame and smoke shot from the
ravine edge there below them, and before the dull reports could reach
their ears the foremost bison dropped on his knees and then rolled over
on the sod; and then came the order, at sound of which, back among the
halted troopers, every carbine leaped from its socket.

CHAPTER III.

Down along the building railway in the valley or the Platte there had
been two years of frequent encounter with small bands of Indians. Down
along the Smoky Hill, in Kansas, the Cheyennes were ever giving trouble.
Even around Laramie and Frayne, on the North Platte, settlers and
soldiers had been murdered, as well as one or two officers, caught alone
out hunting, and the Indians were, of course, the perpetrators.
Nevertheless, it had been the policy of the leaders of the Northern
Sioux to avoid any meeting in force and to deny the complicity of their
people in the crimes committed. Supply trains to Reno, Kearney and C. F.
Smith, the Big Horn posts of the Bozeman Trail went to and fro with
guards of only moderate size. Officers had taken their wives and
children to these far-away stations. The stockades were filled with
soldiers' families. Big bands of Indians roamed the lovely valleys of
the Piney, the Tongue, and Rosebud, near at hand, and rode into full
view of the wary sentries at the stockades, yet made no hostile
demonstration. Officers and men went far up the rocky canons of the
hills in search of fish or game, and came back unmolested. Escorts
reported that they sometimes marched all day long side by side with
hunting bands of Sioux, a mile away; and often little parties, squaws
and boys and young men, would ride confidently over and beg for sugar,
coffee, hardtack--anything, and ride off with their plunder in the best
of spirits and with all apparent good feelin