gently away.

CHAPTER XXIII

LONE CHIEF GOES WEST

Many moons had come and gone since Dusty Star and Kiopo disappeared into
the West. To those who asked questions, none made answer. That was
partly because the folk who knew were not asked. The folk who knew, not
being asked, kept that knowledge to themselves. Baltook could have told;
Boola also. Goshmeelee herself was a storehouse of information. But none
of these were likely to travel hundreds of miles east to carry news to
those who did not come to them. Even Lone Chief himself, popularly
supposed to know all things, if only he could be persuaded to tell them,
did not know.

One evening, in late summer, an Indian came riding into camp. He had
ridden fast and far, and his pony was exhausted. He brought disquieting
news. The Yellow Dogs, their deadly enemies, were gathering in the
North. The Sarcees, allies of the Yellow Dogs, were also on the
war-path. Trouble would come from the north, even before the wild geese.

Hastily the old Chief, Spotted Eagle, summoned a gathering of the
braves. But first he sent an urgent message to Lone Chief. And Lone
Chief, already knowing of the threatening danger, came. So when Spotted
Eagle made a solemn speech of few words but very packed with
information, Lone Chief was not surprised. How did he know?... In the
vast solitudes of the North West, long before Telegraph wires were
invented, news travelled in peculiarly wireless ways along the fine
waves of the air for those whose minds were the right sort of receivers.
And Lone Chief had that sort of mind which was always receiving. But
though he came, he sat in silence at the meeting, and let other people
talk. And not till every one else had spoken, some suggesting one thing,
and some another, did Lone Chief open the outside of his mouth and
astonish his hearers with the inside of his mind.

"You will never be able to defeat the Yellow Dogs without the strong
medicine," he said. "The strong medicine departed from you, when you
drove Dusty Star's wolf into the west. Dusty Star and his wolf are a
powerful medicine. You have none left to you which is as strong as
theirs. Unless they bring it back to you, you will lose your scalps to
the Yellow Dogs."

After Lone Chief had ceased speaking, great astonishment filled his
audience; yet because it was Lone Chief who had said the marvellous
thing, they were forced to believe it, even against their will.

But when Spotted Eagle