sa which skirted the river bank. Old bucks,
warriors with necklaces of cruel-looking claws and beaded breast plates
decorated with strands of human hair woven into pendants, stood in the
shadow of the tepee fires. Shrill cries of hungry papooses rent the air;
guttural jargon of young bucks in animated conversation rasped ominously
against the sensitive ear with words which only an Indian can pronounce,
made up as they are from Mexican, Spanish and Indian dialect.

Old squaws tottered into camp, loaded with bundles of fagots gathered
from the fallen timber, and as these old witches with thrice-wrinkled
faces peered into the gloom and discerned Chiquita astride "Bonito" they
spitefully threw an armful of new wood into the fire, raising a cloud of
tiny sparks, and mutterings, half welcome and half imprecation, greeted
her; all cringed before that dauntless maiden, yet all would have been
glad to see her the victim of some tragedy. Her word was law, and that
law a restraining influence which had thus far protected the settlers,
the hunters, the trappers and the white men and women who composed the
agent's family on the reservation, so far from the habitation of white
men and so far from the protecting arm of the United States military.

Old Hutch-a-ma-Chuck was bedecked with a grotesque war bonnet of eagles'
feathers, from the tips of which hung Arapahoe scalp locks; a necklace
of grizzly claws surrounded his wrinkled neck, and in his arms he
carried a worn-out army carbine, which had not been loaded in ten years.
Uncas, wrapped in a military coat made from a United States blanket,
stood with a big frontier six-shooter hanging listlessly from his arm,
but his eyes snapped viciously as he smiled a welcome to Chiquita, the
smile retreating into an ambuscade of wrinkles which seemed to say,
"Wait until I get a good chance." Broken Nose, with head encircled half
a dozen times with the skins of rattlesnakes, needed no placard to warn
the stranger against encroaching on this Indian's domain. Bowlegs, the
dandy of the camp, was regal in a red-lined vest which he wore lining
outside, and an old plug hat picked up at the Agency or at some frontier
town, ornamented with shipping tags and express labels, was jauntily
tipped on one side of his head, while a gaudy plaid shirt flapped
literally in the breezes, for an Indian knows not of decrees of fashion
regarding shirtology and could not be induced to confine the biggest
part of that s