ne were
attempting a little bluff of their own; but the unprecedented visit of
nine men appeared to them so dauntless that all notion of resistance
left them. They were sure Gray Fox had a large army. And they came,
and kept coming, and the place became full of them. The troopers had
all they could do to form an escort and keep up the delusion, but by
degrees order began, and the column was forming. Riding along the edge
of the willows came E-egante, gay in his blankets, and saying, "How!
how!" to Keyser, the only man at all near him. The pony ambled, and
sidled, paused, trotted a little, and Keyser was beginning to wonder,
when all at once a woman in a green shawl sprang from the thicket,
leaped behind the chief, and the pony flashed by and away, round the
curve. Keyser had lifted his carbine, but forbore; for he hesitated to
kill the woman. Once more the two appeared, diminutive and scurrying,
the green shawl bright against the hill-side they climbed. Sarah had
been willing to take her chances of death with her hero, and now she
vanished with him among his mountains, returning to her kind, and
leaving her wedded white man and half-breeds forever.

"I don't feel so mad as I ought," said Specimen Jones.

Crook laughed to Glynn about it. "We've got a big balance of 'em," he
said, "if we can get 'em all to Boise. They'll probably roast me in the
East." And they did. Hearing how forty took three hundred, but let one
escape (and a few more on the march home), the superannuated cattle of
the War Department sat sipping their drink at the club in Washington,
and explained to each other how they would have done it.

And so the General's bluff partly failed. E-egante kept his freedom,
"all along o' thet yere pizen squaw," as Mr. Long judiciously remarked.
It was not until many years after that the chief's destiny overtook
him; and concerning that, things both curious and sad could be told.[A]

[Footnote A: Let me no longer pervert General Crook's military tactics.
It was a dismounted charge that he ordered on this occasion, as a friend
who was present has written me since the first publication of this
story.

_Mr. Remington's illustration was made to suit the text in its original
form._--Publisher's Note.]

SALVATION GAP

After cutting the Gazelle's throat, Drylyn had gone out of her tent,
secure and happy in choosing the skilful moment. They would think it was
the other man--the unknown one. There were his boot-