"What are you feeding to the animals?" Crook inquired.

"Why, General, _you_ know jest 's well 's me," said Jack, grinning.

"I suppose I do if you say so, Jack. Ten pounds first ten days, five pounds next ten, and you're out of grain for the next ten. Is that the way still?"

"Thet's the way, General, on these yere thirty-day affairs."

Through all this small-talk Crook had been inspecting the mules and the horses on picket-line, and silently forming his conclusion. He now returned to Captain Glynn and shared his mess-box.

They made Snake River. Crook knew better than Long what the animals could do. And next day they crossed, again by starlight, turned for a little way up the Owyhee, decided that E-egante had not gone that road, trailed up the bluffs and ledges from the Snake Valley on to the barren height of land, and made for the Malheur River, finding the eight hoofs of two deer lying in a melted place where a fire had been. Mr. Dailey had insisted that at least fifty Indians had drunk his liniment and trifled with his cats. Indeed, at times during his talk with General Crook the old gentleman had been sure there were a hundred. If this were their trail which the command had now struck, there may possibly have been eight. It was quite evident that the chief had not taken any three hundred warriors upon that visit, if he had that number anywhere. So the column went up the Malheur main stream through the sage-brush and the gray weather (it was still cold, but no sun any more these last two days), and, coming to the North Fork, turned up towards a spur of the mountains and Castle Rock. The water ran smooth black between its edging of ice, thick, white, and crusted like slabs of cocoanut candy, and there in the hollow of a bend they came suddenly upon what they sought.

Stems of smoke, faint and blue, spindled up from a blurred acre of willow thicket, dense, tall as two men, a netted brown and yellow mesh of twigs and stiff wintry rods. Out from the level of their close, nature-woven tops rose at distances the straight, slight blue smoke-lines, marking each the position of some invisible lodge. The whole acre was a bottom ploughed at some former time by a wash-out, and the troops looked down on it from the edge of the higher ground, silent in the quiet, gray afternoon, the empty sage-brush territory stretching a short way to fluted hills that were white below and blackened with pines above.

The General, taking a rough chance as he often did, sent ground scouts forward and ordered a charge instantly, to catch the savages unready; and the stiff rods snapped and tangled between the beating hoofs. The horses plunged at the elastic edges of this excellent fortress, sometimes half lifted as a bent willow levered up against their bellies, and the forward-tilting men fended their faces from the whipping twigs.

They could not wedge a man's length into that pliant labyrinth, and the General called them out. They rallied among the sage-brush above, Crook's cheeks and many others painted with purple lines of blood, hardened already and cracking like enamel. The baffled troopers glared at the thicket. Not a sign nor a sound came from in there. The willows, with the gentle tints of winter veiling their misty twigs, looked serene and even innocent, fitted to harbor birds--not birds of prey--and the quiet smoke threaded upwards through the air. Of course the liniment-drinkers must have heard the noise.

"What do you suppose they're doing?" inquired Glynn.

"Looking at us," said Crook.

"I wish we could return the compliment," said the captain.

Crook pointed. Had any wind been blowing, what the General saw would have been less worth watching. Two willow branches shook, making a vanishing ripple on the smooth surface of the tree-tops. The pack-train was just coming in sight over the rise, and Crook immediately sent an orderly with some message. More willow branches shivered an instant and were still; then, while the General and the captain sat on their horses and watched, the thicket gave up its secret to them; for, as little light gusts coming abreast over a lake travel and touch the water, so in different spots the level maze of twigs was stirred; and if the eye fastened upon any one of these it could have been seen to come out from the centre towards the edge, successive twigs moving, as the tops of long gra.s.s tremble and mark the progress of a snake. During a short while this increased greatly, the whole thicket moving with innumerable tracks. Then everything ceased, with the blue wands of smoke rising always into the quiet afternoon.

"Can you see 'em?" said Glynn.

"Not a bit. Did you happen to hear any one give an estimate of this band?"

Glynn mentioned his tale of the three hundred.

It was not new to the General, but he remarked now that it must be pretty nearly correct; and his eye turned a moment upon his forty troopers waiting there, grim and humorous; for they knew that the thicket was looking at them, and it amused their American minds to wonder what the Old Man was going to do about it.

"It's his bet, and he holds poor cards," murmured Specimen Jones; and the neighbors grinned.

And here the Old Man continued the play that he had begun when he sent the orderly to the pack-train. That part of the command had halted in consequence, disposed itself in an easy-going way, half in, half out of sight on the ridge, and men and mules looked entirely careless. Glynn wondered; but no one ever asked the General questions, in spite of his amiable voice and countenance. He now sent for Sarah the squaw.

"You tell E-egante," he said, "that I am not going to fight with his people unless his people make me. I am not going to do them any harm, and I wish to be their friend. The White Father has sent me. Ask E-egante if he has heard of Gray Fox. Tell him Gray Fox wishes E-egante and all his people to be ready to go with him to-morrow at nine o'clock."

And Sarah, standing on the frozen bank, pulled her green shawl closer, and shouted her message faithfully to the willows. Nothing moved or showed, and Crook, riding up to the squaw, held his hand up as a further sign to the flag of peace that had been raised already. "Say that I am Gray Fox," said he.

On that there was a moving in the bushes farther along, and, going opposite that place with the squaw, Crook and Glynn saw a narrow entrance across which some few branches reached that were now spread aside for three figures to stand there.

"E-egante!" said Sarah, eagerly. "See him big man!" she added to Crook, pointing. A tall and splendid buck, gleaming with colors, and rich with fringe and buckskin, watched them. He seemed to look at Sarah, too. She, being ordered, repeated what she had said; but the chief did not answer.

"He is counting our strength," said Glynn.

"He's done that some time ago," said Crook. "Tell E-egante," he continued to the squaw, "that I will not send for more soldiers than he sees here. I do not wish anything but peace unless he wishes otherwise."

Sarah's musical voice sounded again from the bank, and E-egante watched her intently till she was finished. This time he replied at some length.

He and his people had not done any harm. He had heard of Gray Fox often.

All his people knew Gray Fox was a good man and would not make trouble.

There were some flies that stung a man sitting in his house, when he had not hurt them. Gray Fox would not hurt any one till their hand was raised against him first. E-egante and his people had wondered why the horses made so much noise just now. He and his people would come to-morrow with Gray Fox.

And then he went inside the thicket again, and the willows looked as innocent as ever. Crook and the captain rode away.

"My speech was just a little weak coming on top of a charge of cavalry,"

the General admitted. "And that fellow put his finger right on the place. I'll give you my notion, captain. If I had said we had more soldiers behind the hill, like as not this squaw of ours would have told him I lied; she's an uncertain quant.i.ty, I find. But I told him the exact truth--that I had no more--and he won't believe it, and that's what I want."

So Glynn understood. The pack-train had been halted in a purposely exposed position, which would look to the Indians as if another force was certainly behind it, and every move was now made to give an impression that the forty were only the advance of a large command.

Crook pitched his A tent close to the red men's village, and the troops went into camp regardlessly near. The horses were turned out to graze ostentatiously unprotected, so that the people in the thicket should have every chance to notice how secure the white men felt. The mules pastured comfortably over the shallow snow that crushed as they wandered among the sage-bush, and the square bell hung once more from the neck of the leader and tankled upon the hill. The shelter-tents littered the flat above the wash-out, and besides the cook-fire others were built irregularly far down the Malheur North Fork, shedding an extended glimmer of deceit. It might have been the camp of many hundred. A little blaze shone comfortably on the canvas of Crook's tent, and Sergeant Keyser, being in charge of camp, had adopted the troop cook-fire for his camp guard after the cooks had finished their work. The willow thicket below grew black and mysterious, and quiet fell on the white camp. By eight the troopers had gone to bed. Night had come pretty cold, and a little occasional breeze, that pa.s.sed like a chill hand laid a moment on the face, and went down into the willows. Now and again the water running through the ice would lap and gurgle at some air-hole. Sergeant Keyser sat by his fire and listened to the lonely bell sounding from the dark. He wished the men would feel more at home with him. With Jack Long, satirical, old, and experienced, they were perfectly familiar, because he was a civilian; but to Keyser, because he had been in command of a battalion, they held the att.i.tude of school-boys to a master--the instinctive feeling of all privates towards all officers. Jones and c.u.mnor were members of his camp guard. Being just now off post, they stood at the fire, but away from him.

"How do you like this compared with barracks?" the sergeant asked, conversationally.

"It's all right," said Jones.

"Did you think it was all right that first morning? I didn't enjoy it much myself. Sit down and get warm, won't you?"

The men came and stood awkwardly. "I 'ain't never found any excitement in getting up early," said Jones, and was silent. A burning log shifted, and the bell sounded in a new place as the leader pastured along. Jones kicked the log into better position. "But this affair's gettin'

inter-esting," he added.

"Don't you smoke?" Keyser inquired of c.u.mnor, and tossed him his tobacco-pouch. Presently they were seated, and the conversation going better. Arizona was compared with Idaho. Everybody had gone to bed.

"Arizona's the most outrageous outrage in the United States," declared Jones.

"Why did you stay there six years, then?" said c.u.mnor.

"Guess I'd been there yet but for you comin' along and us both enlistin'

that crazy way. Idaho's better. Only," said Jones, thoughtfully, "coming to an ice-box from a hundred thousand in the shade, it's a wonder a man don't just split like a gla.s.s chimbly."

The willows crackled, and all laid hands on their pistols.

"How! how!" said a strange, propitiating voice.

It was a man on a horse, and directly they recognized E-egante himself.

They would have raised an alarm, but he was alone, and plainly not running away. Nor had he weapons. He rode into the fire-light, and "How!

how!" he repeated, anxiously. He looked and nodded at the three, who remained seated.

"Good-evening," said the sergeant.

"Christmas is coming," said Jones, amicably.

"How! how!" said E-egante. It was all the English he had. He sat on his horse, looking at the men, the camp, the cook-fire, the A tent, and beyond into the surrounding silence. He started when the bell suddenly jangled near by. The wandering mule had only shifted in towards the camp and shaken his head; but the Indian's nerves were evidently on the sharpest strain.

"Sit down!" said Keyser, making signs, and at these E-egante started suspiciously.

"Warm here!" Jones called to him, and c.u.mnor showed his pipe.

The chief edged a thought closer. His intent, brilliant eyes seemed almost to listen as well as look, and though he sat his horse with heedless grace and security, there was never a figure more ready for vanishing upon the instant. He came a little nearer still, alert and pretty as an inquisitive buck antelope, watching not the three soldiers only, but everything else at once. He eyed their signs to dismount, looked at their faces, considered, and with the greatest slowness got off and came stalking to the fire. He was a fine tall man, and they smiled and nodded at him, admiring his clean blankets and the magnificence of his buckskin shirt and leggings.