he realized that he had to cover
a hundred miles in as few hours as possible. Every day that passed would
make it more difficult for him to rejoin his family.

Although he kept as far as he could from the settlements, he would come
now and then upon a solitary frame house, razed to the ground by the
war-parties of the day before. The members of the ill-fated family were
to be seen scattered in and about the place; and their white, upturned
faces told him that his race must pay for the deed.

The dog that howled pitifully over the dead was often the only survivor
of the farmer's household.

Occasionally Tawasuota heard at a distance the wagons of the fugitives,
loaded with women and children, while armed men walked before and
behind. These caravans were usually drawn by oxen and moved slowly
toward some large town.

When the dawn appeared in the east, the chief soldier was compelled to
conceal himself in a secluded place. He rolled up in his blanket, lay
down in a dry creek-bed among the red willows and immediately fell
asleep.

With the next evening he resumed his journey, and reached Faribault
toward midnight. Even here every approach was guarded against the
possibility of an Indian attack. But there was much forest, and he knew
the country well. He reconnoitred, and soon found the Indian community,
but dared not approach and enter, for these Indians had allied
themselves with the whites; they would be charged with treachery if
it were known that they had received a hostile Sioux, and none were so
hated by the white people as Little Crow and his war-chief.

He chose a concealed position from which he might watch the movements of
his wife, if she were indeed there, and had not been waylaid and slain
on the journey hither.

That night was the hardest one that the warrior had ever known. If he
slept, it was only to dream of the war-whoop and attack; but at last he
found himself broad awake, the sun well up, and yes! there were his two
little sons, playing outside their teepee as of old. The next moment he
heard the voice of his wife from the deep woods wailing for her husband!

"Oh, take us, husband, take us with you! let us all die together!" she
pleaded as she clung to him whom she had regarded as already dead; for
she knew of the price that had been put upon his head, and that some
of the halfbreeds loved money better than the blood of their Indian
mothers.

Tawasuota stood for a minute without speaking, wh