In each case the knotted handkerchief was offered with the same spoken formula.  Ambrose asked what it was they said.

“This is give-away dance,” Watusk explained.  “He is say:  ’This my knife, this my blanket, this my silk-worked moccasins.’  What he want to give.  After he got give it.”

Ambrose observed that each dancer laid two matches on the cold stove as he took his place, and when he retired from the dance picked them up again.  He asked what that signified.

Watusk shrugged again.  “How do I know?” he said.  “It is always done.”

Ambrose learned later that this was the invariable answer of the Kakisas to any question concerning their customs.

Watusk was exerting himself to be hospitable, continually pressing cups of steaming bitter tea on Ambrose and Simon.  Ambrose, watching him, made up his mind that the chief’s unusual affability masked a deep disquiet.

The sharp, shifty eyes were continually turning with an expectant look to the door.  Ambrose found himself watching the door, too.

To Ambrose the uncouth dance had neither head nor tail; nevertheless, it had a striking effect on the participators and spectators.

Minute by minute the excitement mounted.  The stick-kettles throbbed faster and ever more disquietingly.  It seemed as if the skin of the drums were the very hearts of the hearers, with the drummers’ knuckles searching out their secrets.

Eyes burned like stars around the walls, and the chant was renewed with a passionate abandon.  The figures hitched and sprang around the homely iron stove like lithe animals.

Suddenly the noise of running feet was heard outside, and a man burst in through the door with livid face and starting eyes.  The drumming, the song, and the dance stopped simultaneously.

The man cried out a single sentence in the Kakisa tongue.  Cried it over and over breathlessly, without any expression.

The effect on the crowd was electrical.  Cries of surprise and alarm, both hoarse and shrill, answered him.  A wave of rage swept over them all, distorting their faces.  They jammed in the doorway, fighting to get out.

“What is it?” cried Ambrose of Watusk.

Watusk’s face was working oddly with excitement.

But it was not rage like the others.  The difference between him and all his people was marked.

“The flour is burning!” the chief cried.

“This was what he expected,” thought Ambrose.

As he struggled to get out, Ambrose’s hand was seized and pressed by a small warm one.

He had a momentary impression of the wistful girl beside him.  Then she was swept away.

CHAPTER XXIII.

FIRE AND RAPINE.

The Kakisas ran down the trail like a heap of dry leaves propelled by a squall of wind.  To Ambrose it all seemed as senseless and unreal as a nightmare.