The main body had quietly halted in the middle of the valley.  After a moment’s pause, one of their number raised a rifle with a white flag tied to the barrel.

The Indians surrounding Ambrose, lowered their guns, and murmured confusedly among themselves.  Ambrose looked at Watusk.

The chief betrayed symptoms of indecision, biting his lip, and pulling his fingers until the joints cracked.  Ambrose took a little encouragement from the sight.

To Ambrose’s astonishment he saw the troopers dismounting.  Flinging the lines over their horses’ heads, they allowed the beasts to crop the rich grass of the bottoms.

The men stood about in careless twos and threes, lighting their pipes.  Only their leader remained in the saddle, lolling comfortably sidewise.  The breeze brought the sound of their light talk and deep laughter.

The effect on the Indians was marked.  Their jaws dropped, they looked at each other incredulously, they jabbered excitedly.

Plainly they were divided between admiration and mystification.  Watusk was demoralized.  His hand shook, an ashy tint crept under his yellow skin, an agony of impotent rage narrowed his eyes.

Ambrose’s heart swelled with the pride of race.  “Splendid fellows!” he cried to himself.  “It was exactly the right thing to do!”

Presently a hail was raised in the valley below; a deep English voice whose tones gladdened Ambrose’s ears.  “Ho, Watusk!”

Every eye turned toward the leader.  Watusk had the air of a wilful child called by his parent.  He pished and swaggered, and made some remark to his men with the obsequious smile with which child—­or man—­asks for the support of his mates in his wrong-doing.

The men did not smile back; they merely watched soberly to see what Watusk was going to do about it.

The hail was repeated.  “Ho, Watusk!  Inspector Egerton orders you to come and talk to him!”

So it was Colonel Egerton, thought Ambrose, commander of B district of the police, and known affectionately from Caribou Lake to the Arctic as Patch-pants Egerton, or simply as “the old man.”  He was a veteran of two Indian uprisings.  Ambrose felt still further reassured.

Watusk, still swaggering, nevertheless visibly weakened.  In the end he had to go, just as a child must in the end obey a calm, imperative summons.

He issued a petulant order.  All the men except Ambrose’s guard of six took their guns and filed out through the back of the pit.

Watusk went last.  Glancing over his shoulder and seeing that those left behind were busily watching the troopers in the valley, he produced a flask from his pocket and took a pull at it.  Ambrose caught the act out of the corner of his eye.

A few minutes later, Watusk and his followers rode over the edge of the hill to the left of the rifle pit, and down into the valley.  The policemen scarcely looked up to see them come.