. Then, with a contemptuous grunt,
the messenger passed Enoch by and lifted the latch-string which had been
left hanging out. Enoch followed him into the Breckenridge house.

The runner was a tall Indian lad with a keen face and coal-black eyes
and hair. Enoch knew him, for his people had camped for several years
near the Harding place. But Jonas Harding had had that contempt for the
red race which characterized many of the pioneer people and was the
foundation for more than half the trouble between the whites and reds;
and he had often expressed this contempt before young Crow Wing, who was
a chief's son although his tribe was scattered and decimated by disease.
Crow Wing had hated Enoch's father for his taunts and unkind words, and
now that the elder Harding was dead the young Indian considered his son
cast in the same mould and worthy of the same hatred which he had borne
Jonas. Naturally Enoch would have shared his parent's contempt for the
Indians; but 'Siah Bolderwood, although he had camped, hunted and fought
with Enoch's father for so many years, did not share the latter's
opinion of the Indian character, and from him Enoch had imbibed many
ideas of late which changed his opinion of the red men. There was a
time, however, when the white boy had ridiculed Crow Wing and the latter
had not forgotten.

Enoch watched him now with admiration. The young brave had run for
several miles, having been sent out toward Sancock by one of the
settlers for whom he sometimes worked, but he breathed as easily as
though he had walked instead of run. When one of the men in the
Breckenridge kitchen spoke to him he answered in a perfectly even voice
which showed no tremor of fatigue.

"Him sheriff march now," he said. "Mebbe t'ink um t'ree mile off."

"Where did you leave them?" asked the man in command of the house. The
Indian youth told him. "And how many are there, Crow Wing?" asked
another.

"Many--many!" cried the Indian, his eyes flashing. He held up both hands
and spread all his ten fingers rapidly seven times. "Seventy!" cried one
of the white men. "He means seven hundred," declared the leader. "That
so, Crow Wing, eh?"

The Indian nodded. "Many white men--many guns," he said.

"It's not true," growled one man. "You can't believe anything an Injin
says. Where would the New York sheriff get seven hundred men?"

Crow Wing's eyes flashed and he drew himself up proudly. "Me no lie--me
speak true. Injin not two-tongue lik