ble, he had squatted down in his blanket.
But, now, his shoulders bent, his chin sank to his breast, his eyes grew
dull and sullen.

"Were you in the Mauvaises Terres?" queried the evangelist.

Squaw Charley shook his head.

"On the Powder?"

There was a silent assent.

"The soldiers pursued; maybe they surprised you--which?"

To answer, the Indian rose slowly. With one of Lancaster's crutches he
raked out some ashes and levelled them upon the hearth-stones. Next,
across them, stooping and using a finger, he drew a varying line that
showed the trend of a stream. Far up toward its source, in a bend, he
placed bits of bread from the table to indicate the lodges of his
tribesmen. Slivers from a stick showed that the tepees had been set
thickly in a grove of tall cottonwoods. White beans, from a filled pan
on the floor near by him, stood for the warriors that had fought. His
fingers moved more quickly as, by means of a handful of corn that Dallas
had put in his leather pouch, he planted the United States troops on
three sides of the Indian campground, and moved them forward to the
attack.

Adroitly he manoeuvred the opposing forces, with advancing here and
retreating there, groans when the white men felt the fight too keenly,
low whoops to picture an Indian gain, little puffs of the breath to
betoken flying bullets. The onlookers saw the battle as it had raged
about the tepees. And the flickering lantern, as Squaw Charley moved it
in a semicircle, told them that the firing began at daybreak and
continued until dark.

All at once he changed the picture. Twelve beans were rapidly counted
out and laid in rows, and he mourned softly over these to show that they
were slain warriors. Five kernels of corn--a line of pale-faced
dead--were placed beside the bean rows. This done, he covered the
lantern with the grain-sack and leaned back against the logs.

"Aye, aye," cried David Bond, sadly. "Twelve braves and five troopers
perished! Seventeen souls went to their Maker to mark the greed of the
white man and the yearning to harry off the red! Why do the Indians not
stay in peace and quiet upon the lands set apart for them, and not go
abroad stealing and slaughtering? Why do my own people not give back to
their brothers the country that is rightly theirs?"

Once more Squaw Charley stooped forward and, resting his weight on one
hand, traced the return march of the troopers to a crossing of the
Missouri, where the command h