“Good cavalry, b’gad!” said Battersleigh calmly, as he watched them in their perfect horsemanship.  “See ’em come!” Franklin’s eyes drew their brows down in a narrowing frown, though he remained silent, as was his wont at any time of stress.

The Indians came on, close up to the barricade, where they saw the muzzles of four rifles following them steadily, a sight which to them carried a certain significance.  The line broke and wheeled, scattering, circling, still rising and falling, streaming in hair and feathers, and now attended with a wild discord of high-keyed yells.

“Keep still, boys; don’t shoot!” cried Franklin instinctively.  “Wait!”

It was good advice.  The mingling, shifting line, obedient to some loud word of commando swept again up near to the front of the barricade, then came to a sudden halt with half the forefeet off the ground.  The ponies shuffled and fidgeted, and the men still yelled and called out unintelligible sounds, but the line halted.  It parted, and there rode forward an imposing figure.

Gigantic, savage, stern, clad in the barbaric finery of his race, his body nearly nude, his legs and his little feet covered with bead-laden buckskin, his head surmounted with a horned war bonnet whose eagle plumes trailed down the pony’s side almost to the ground, this Indian headman made a picture not easily to be forgotten nor immediately to be despised.  He sat his piebald stallion with no heed to its restive prancing.  Erect, immobile as a statue, such was the dignity of his carriage, such the stroke of his untamed eye, that each man behind the barricade sank lower and gripped his gun more tightly.  This was a personality not to be held in any hasty or ill-advised contempt.

The Indian walked his horse directly up to the barricade, his eye apparently scorning to take in its crude details.

“Me, White Calf!” he exclaimed in English, like the croak of a parrot, striking his hand upon his breast with a gesture which should have been ludicrous or pompous, but was neither.  “Me, White Calf!” said the chief again, and lifted the medal which lay upon his breast.  “Good.  White man come.  White man go.  Me hunt, now!”

He swept his arm about in a gesture which included the horizon, and indicated plainly his conviction that all the land belonged to him and his own people.  So he stood, silent, and waiting with no nervousness for the diplomacy of the others.

Franklin stepped boldly out from the barricade and extended his hand.  “White Calf, good friend,” said he.  The Indian took his hand without a smile, and with a look which Franklin felt go through him.  At last the chief grunted out something, and, dismounting, seated himself down upon the ground, young men taking his horse and leading it away.  Others, apparently also of rank, came and sat down.  Franklin and his friends joined the rude circle of what they were glad to see was meant to be an impromptu council.