might be prevailed upon to select one
of their own number to accompany the expedition and repeat the terms.
The commanding officer, rather provoked at Lounsbury, who, he thought,
had harmed, and not helped, his cause, immediately suggested this course
to Matthews.

"I can parley-voo for you there, all right," agreed Matthews,
patronisingly. "But how you goin'?"

"You and I, alone."

Matthews stared. "Carry any guns?" he asked.

"Not when I go into the stockade. The Indians are without weapons. And I
like to show them that I trust them."

The other laughed. "You go t' tell some redskins that they's goin' t'
be strung up, and y' don't take no gun. Well! not for _me_, Colonel!"

"Then, we'll have a guard."

"O. K. I'm with you."

A scout who understood the sign language was despatched to the stockade.
And by the time the braves were settled down before the blaze, Colonel
Cummings, Matthews, and a detail of armed men were before the aperture
of the Medicine Lodge.

The soldiers waited outside the big wigwam, where they made themselves
comfortable by moving up and down. Their commanding officer and the
interpreter went in. At their appearance, the warriors rose gravely,
shook hands, and motioned the white men to take seats upon a robe placed
at Lame Foot's left hand. The air in the place was already beginning to
thicken with kinnikinick and fire smoke; the mingled smell of tobacco
and skins made it nauseating. Colonel Cummings would gladly have hurried
his errand. But Indian etiquette forbade haste. He was forced to contain
himself and let the council proceed with customary and exasperating
slowness.

The first step was the pipe. A young Sioux applied a burning splinter to
a sandstone bowl and handed the long stem to the medicine-man. His
nostrils filled, he gave the pipe to Colonel Cummings, from whom, in
turn, it passed to Matthews, Standing Buffalo, Canada John, and thence
along the curving line of warriors. When all had smoked, the bowl was
once more filled and lighted, and once more it was sent from hand to
hand. Not until this ceremony had been repeated many times did the
council come to speech.

But neither the commanding officer nor his interpreter made the first
address. Though the braves guessed that something unusual had brought
about an assembly at this hour, and though their curiosity on the
subject was childishly live, they surpassed their captor in patience.
Stolidly they looked on while Lame F