Watusk kept Ambrose at his side.  Facing his men, he raised his hand theatrically.  They sprang to their saddles and, wheeling, set out over the prairie.  Gradually they lengthened out into single file.

Presently the leader came loping back, and the whole body rode around Watusk and Ambrose in a vast circle.  It was like an uncanny midnight circus.

The riders maintained their silence.  The only sounds were the thudding of hoofs on turf and the shaking of the horsemen in their clothes.  Only one or two used saddles.  The rifle-barrels caught dull gleams of moonlight.

At another signal from Watusk they pulled up and, turning their horses’ heads toward the center, made as small a circle as their numbers could squeeze into.

Watusk addressed Ambrose with a magniloquent air.  “See my children, white man!  Brave as the white-face mountain bear!  Swift as flying duck!  This only a few my men.  Toward the setting sun I got so many more wait my call.

“By the big lake I got ‘nother great army.  Let white men tak’ care how they treat us bad.  To-morrow red man’s day come.  He got Watusk lead him now.  Watusk see through white man’s bluff!”

It was impossible for Ambrose not to be impressed, ridiculous as Watusk’s harangue was.  There were the men, not less than two hundred—­and twenty police to be attacked.

Watusk now rode around the circle, addressing his men in their own tongue, singling out this man and that, and issuing instructions.  It was all received in the same silence.

Ambrose believed these quiet, ragged little warriors to be more dangerous than their inflated leader.  At least in their ignorance they were honest; one could respect them.

In more ways than one Ambrose had felt drawn to the Kakisas.  They seemed to him a real people, largely unspoiled as yet by the impact of a stronger race.

If he could only have talked to them, he thought.  Surely in five minutes he could put them to rights and overthrow this general of straw!

Watusk rode out of the circle, followed by Ambrose and Ambrose’s guard.  Several of the leading men, including one that Ambrose guessed from his size to be Myengeen, joined Watusk in front, and the main body made a soft thunder of hoofs in the rear.

They were headed in a southeasterly direction—­that is to say, back toward the Kakisa River.  They rode at a walk.  There was no conversation except among the leaders.  The moon went down and the shadows pressed closer.

In a little while there was a division.  Myengeen, parted from Watusk and rode off to the right, followed, Ambrose judged from the sounds, by a great part of the horsemen.

The remainder kept on in the same direction.  Half a mile farther Watusk himself drew aside.  Ambrose’s guards and others joined him, while the balance of the Indians rode on and were swallowed in the darkness.