he had little
appetite, and when the warriors saw that he had finished they
bound him again.

"What are you going to do to me?" asked Dick in a kind of vague
curiosity.

No one gave any answer. They did not seem to hear him. Dick
fancied that some of them understood English, but chose to leave
him in ignorance. He resolved to imitate their own stoicism and
wait. When they bound his arms again, and his feet also, he made
no resistance, but lay down quietly on the rush mat and gazed
with an air of indifference at the skin wall of the lodge. All
warriors went out, except one, who sat in the doorway with his
rifle on his knee.

"They flatter me," thought Dick. "They must think me of some
importance or that I'm dangerous, since they bind and guard me so
well."

His thongs of soft deerskin, while secure, were not galling.
They neither chafed nor prevented the circulation, and when he
grew tired of lying in one position he could turn into another.
But it was terribly hard waiting. He did not know what was
before him. Torture or death? Both, most likely. He tried to
be resigned, but how could one be resigned when one was so young
and so strong? The hum of the village life came to him, the
sound of voices, the tread of feet, the twang of a boyish
bowstring, but the guard in the doorway never stirred. It seemed
to Dick that the Sioux, who wore very little clothing, was carved
out of reddish-brown stone. Dick wondered if he would ever move,
and lying on his back he managed to raise his head a little on
the doubled corner of the rush mat, and watch that he might see.

Bound, helpless, and shut off from the rest of the world, this
question suddenly became vital to him: Would that Indian ever
move, or would he not? He must have been sitting in that
position at least two hours. Always he stared straight before
him, the muscles on his bare arms never quivered in the
slightest, and the rifle lay immovable across knees which also
were bare. How could he do it? How could he have such control
over his nerves and body? Dick's mind slowly filled with wonder,
and then he began to have a suspicion that the Sioux was
not real, merely some phantom of the fancy, or that he himself
was dreaming. It made him angry--angry at himself, angry at
the Sioux, angry at everything. He closed his eyes, held them
tightly shut for five minutes, and then opened them again. The
Sioux was still there. Dick was about to break throu