The impulse of my reputation led me farther.  A fortnight of more inactivity followed, and then we ventured out into the fields once more.  But I went with the guard this time, not with the women,—­thanks to a whim the men had for humoring me.

“Arrah, and beant he a man all but two feet,” said Terence, “wid more brain than me an’ Bill Cowan and Poulsson togither?  ’Tis a fox’s nose Davy has for the divils, Bill.  Sure he can smell thim the same as you an’ me kin see the red paint on their faces.”

“I reckon that’s true,” said Bill Cowan, with solemnity, and so he carried me off.

At length the cattle were turned out to browse greedily through the clearing, while we lay in the woods by the forest and listened to the sound of their bells, but when they strayed too far, I was often sent to drive them back.  Once when this happened I followed them to the shade at the edge of the woods, for it was noon, and the sun beat down fiercely.  And there I sat for some time watching them as they lashed their sides with their tails and pawed the ground, for experience is a good master.  Whether or not the flies were all that troubled them I could not tell, and no sound save the tinkle of their bells broke the noonday stillness.  Making a circle I drove them back toward the fort, much troubled in mind.  I told Cowan, but he laughed and said it was the flies.  Yet I was not satisfied, and finally stole back again to the place where I had found them.  I sat a long time hidden at the edge of the forest, listening until my imagination tricked me into hearing those noises which I feared and yet longed for.  Trembling, I stole a little farther in the shade of the woods, and then a little farther still.  The leaves rustled in the summer’s breeze, patches of sunlight flickered on the mould, the birds twittered, and the squirrels scolded.  A chipmunk frightened me as he flew chattering along a log.  And yet I went on.  I came to the creek as it flowed silently in the shade, stepped in, and made my way slowly down it, I know not how far, walking in the water, my eye alert to every movement about me.  At length I stopped and caught my breath.  Before me, in a glade opening out under great trees, what seemed a myriad of forked sticks were piled against one another, three by three, and it struck me all in a heap that I had come upon a great encampment.  But the skeletons of the pyramid tents alone remained.  Where were the skins?  Was the camp deserted?

For a while I stared through the brier leaves, then I took a venture, pushed on, and found myself in the midst of the place.  It must have held near a thousand warriors.  All about me were gray heaps of ashes, and bones of deer and elk and buffalo scattered, some picked clean, some with the meat and hide sticking to them.  Impelled by a strong fascination, I went hither and thither until a sound brought me to a stand—­the echoing crack of a distant rifle.  On the heels of it came another, then several