They reined up outside the cabin of Sitting Bull.
With a cry of rage Drum scrambled down the side of Medicine Ridge, half falling, half stumbling, running headlong toward the camp. Running Horse raced behind him, shouting at the top of his voice, trying to rouse the camp.
The Indian policeman, burly, with his short hair, in his ill-fitting blue uniform, guts cold, hands trembling, with his white man’s orders, hesitated before the calm wood of the door to Sitting Bull’s cabin.
Then he drew his pistol from the cavalry holster at his belt.
This was the cabin of the troublemaker, the hated Sitting Bull, who would not smoke with him, and his kind, and who as long as he lived would not do so, Sitting Bull who stood in the hearts of the people as a symbol of the old life that had gone with the departing buffalo, who as long as he lived would remind the people of the pipes of stone, the days of many horses and the feathers of eagles.
The Indians who were wise would understand that these were the days of the white man, and would be good Indians, and live as the holy teachers of the white men cautioned them, being meek, and bearing their crosses and loving all men, even Crows. And when the Indians were good they would receive gifts from the Great White Father, and maybe even a badge and a gun, and a blue suit that would make them more than a chief, almost as much as a white man himself.
The Indian policeman had no great love for the white man, but he knew that the wars were over, and he knew who had won them. Sitting Bull did not know that. Sitting Bull would not smoke with him. Sitting Bull called him a short hair.
The policeman threw his weight against the cabin door bursting it open.
He stumbled into the cabin, followed by several of his men, clutching their weapons.
Sitting Bull, on one side of his lodge, sat up, wrapped in his blankets. “What do you want?” he asked.
The Indian policeman pointed his pistol at the chief. “Come with me,” he said. His voice was loud, like a white man who talks to an Indian. Then he remembered the formula given to him by the white men. “You are under arrest,” he said.
Sitting Bull sat quiet for a minute. Then he said, “Very well, I will go with you.”
The Indian policeman gestured with his pistol, impatiently, for the chief to rise and dress.
Already there were four or five dogs barking outside and he could hear the noises of the camp.
Outside two of the Indian police were fumbling to put the high wooden saddle of Spanish design on Sitting Bull’s white horse.
Some of the Indians of the camp, now roused by the clamor of the dogs, stumbled out of their cabins and tepees, forming a puzzled, hostile ring about the Indian policemen outside the entrance to Sitting Bull’s cabin.
The police pointed their weapons at the Indians and ordered them to draw back.
Several of the police looked anxiously in the direction from which they had come.
Old Bear, standing in the door of his cabin, observed this and he too looked down their backtrail. He could see nothing, but his war sense told him that there would be soldiers, white soldiers, not far distant. Indian police for diplomatic reasons, not soldiers, had been sent to the cabin of Sitting Bull, presumably to seize him and take him away to the iron and stone houses.
But there would be soldiers.
The white man would not trust this thing altogether to short hairs.
There would be soldiers.
Old Bear went back into his cabin and removed his rifle from a cracked, beaded, buckskin sheath.
Edward Chance was awakened by the barking of dogs. He was in Running Horse’s cabin.
Winona, who had accompanied Running Horse back to the cabin the night before, and who had accepted and given love in the very room in which Chance had pretended to sleep, breathing heavily, wrapped in his blankets, smiling, facing the wall, was already up.
The fire was started.
Chance sat upright, blinking the grit of sleep out of his eyes, puzzled, wondering about the dogs.
He looked at the girl. She now wore moccasins and a fringed, deerskin dress, having visited Old Bear’s cabin last night to gather her belongings. Her face had been washed and her hair, cut short to the back of her neck, had been combed. She was piling articles in the cabin which might be of use in a journey, particularly food, clothing and ammunition, into the center of a striped cotton blanket on the dirt floor.
Outside Chance could now hear cries, angry shouts.
“What’s wrong?” he asked Winona.
Winona stopped for a moment to face him. Her face was ashen. “A bad thing,” she said, “a bad thing, Brother of my Husband.”
“Where is my brother?” asked Chance.
“I do not know,” said the girl.
She turned to her work.
Chance reached for the Colt, which he kept next to him, and shook the holster and belt from the weapon.
Swiftly he went to the door, the weapon in his hand. It smelled clean and ready. He had cleaned and oiled it last night.
Chance saw Winona take down the hawk feathers from the rafter and his own medicine kit, and put them in the striped blanket. He noted that the medicine bag of Joseph Running Horse, like the young Indian, was gone.
Yesterday morning Joseph Running Horse, borrowing a white man’s hat, had ridden casually to the Turner soddy, requested and had been given the kit. He had brought it back to the cabin, in case Chance might return. Neither he nor Chance had expected him to return as soon as he had, or in the company of Old Bear, Drum and the two braves.
Yesterday morning now seemed a long time ago.
Chance edged the door open.
There was an angry, milling crowd of Sioux outside Sitting Bull’s cabin. And Chance could see the blue uniforms of Indian police.
He put the weapon in his belt and, unobtrusively, left the cabin, to see what was going on.
He saw Sitting Bull, half dressed, shoved from the cabin by a large Indian policeman.
At the sight of the chief the crowd cried out.
“Go away!” cried the Indian policeman. “Go away!” He waved his pistol at the crowd. He held Sitting Bull by the right arm.
The crowd surged closer, against the rifle muzzles of the police.
Sitting Bull lifted his hand. “No!” he cried. “I will go with them. Do not fight!”
The Indians hesitated.
Chance slipped closer. He saw the Indian policeman suddenly thrust his large revolver in the old chief’s side. “Go away,” said the man, “he is coming with us.” The man’s voice had been fierce, loud, but it had almost broken.