mon," returned Kiddie. "But you've done enough in
helping me to rescue young Rube here. We'll stay the night in your
camp and then get back to our canoe and home to Sweetwater Bridge."

"What's your all-fired hurry?" questioned Simon. "You'll stay as long
as ever you like. It can't be as long as I should like. Stay a while
for my sake. Just consider. It's years since I've heard my mother
tongue spoken as you speak it, and I'm sore longing to have a chat with
a friend who isn't a Crow Indian. Your young partner'd like to stay,
if I know anything of boyhood. The adventure would suit him, and
to-morrow the Crows are going out on a buffalo hunt. A big herd has
been seen, back of Washakee Peak."

Kiddie glanced towards Rube.

"Like to go buffalo huntin', Rube?" he asked.

"Wouldn't I just!" Rube answered. "But you'll come, too, won't you?"

"Oh, yes," Kiddie agreed.

Rube was so hungry after his long fast that he considered the Indian
food quite delicious, and he ate heartily.

After the meal he wandered out of the lodge; but there was little for
him to see except the dark shapes of the wigwams and here and there a
group of silent Indians seated round their camp fire; and so he
returned and took comfortable refuge between the blankets and buffalo
robes provided for him by one of Simon Sprott's attendant braves.

Before he fell asleep, however, he listened to the conversation between
Kiddie and their host.

"He's got spies everywhere," Simon was saying. "Yes, even among the
trappers, even working among the cowboys on the ranches. Many of the
cowboys themselves are in his pay, stealing horses for him from the
outlying corrals, or smuggling firearms into his reservation. For, as
a rule, he gets others to do his dirty work for him. Naturally, we've
got scouts as well as he, and we're not ignorant of his strength or his
intentions."

Rube knew by now that it was of Broken Feather that they were speaking.

"If all I've heard of him is true," said Kiddie, "he has as strong a
following as any chief within a week's ride. As for his intentions, I
don't pretend to have any special knowledge, excepting that he's a man
who thinks a tremendous lot of himself and has the ambition to be a
great military genius like Sitting Bull or Red Cloud."

"That's just the point," resumed Simon Sprott. "And to achieve his
ambition, he's aiming at conquering the smaller tribes, one by
one--Crows, Blackfeet, Arapahoes, Pawne