“Am I a coyote, that my brother traps me in this way?”

The dignified chief, folding his arms across his breast, his face stern and forbidding, replied: 

“Coyote!  No, dog of a pale-face.  The coyote would yelp in mockery to hear you call yourself one.”

“That isn’t answering my question, Eagle Claw, What I want to know is, why am I jumped on in this way?” asked Swanson, his tone pacific and calm, and his manner free from anger, for he saw that it would require a deal of diplomacy to get him out of the scrape.

“You shall be answered, but not here,” and the chief, Eagle Claw, placing his curved hand to his mouth, emitted a shrill, piercing yell which was repeated by the line of scouts until the most remote vidette heard, and headed his horse to the ranche.  The Indians in some parts of the Territory are partly civilized and live in organized towns and villages, electing their head men from time to time.  Others are wild and uncivilized, wandering from place to place, pitching their tepees of buffalo hide on the bank of some rippling stream, or, sequestered in some lovely valley, engage in the pursuit of game and in the care of their herds of ponies and cattle.

It was to the latter class that Eagle Claw and his band belonged.  Gaudy paint, vemillion and yellow, smeared their faces in all the fantastic designs which their grotesque imaginations could invent.  The tanned buckskin leggins, fringed and beaded, were supported at the waist by a belt of leather embroidered and figured.  A blanket thrown carelessly over the shoulder completed the costume, with the addition of mocassins made of rawhide.  Their ponies were selected from the cream of their stock, and the gorgeous trappings of the saddles and harness made a most picturesque scene as the cavalcade filed over the plains.

Riding between two stalwart specimens of the Cherokee tribe, Swanson was closely guarded.  All the answer he could get for his indignant questionings was a surly “Humph,” or a sullen admonition to keep quiet.  The chief led the party due southwest from Swanson’s ranche, and all day long the sturdy ponies were kept at the long, swinging lope which enables them to cover miles during a day.

Late in the afternoon the chief, raising in his stirrups, gave a peculiar, vibrating yell, which was immediately taken up by his followers until the welkin rang with the penetrating sounds.

Like a faint echo an answering yell came back, and soon the forms of horsemen, dashing over the range, could be discerned.

Familiar with all the Indian customs Swanson recognized the yell.  It told the camp that the scouting party had returned successful.

A short canter and the entire band wheeled around the edge of a tract of timber and came out upon the village, pitched on the banks of a stream of water, the tepees grouped in a circle around the chief’s wigwam, the blue smoke curling lazily through the aperture at the top, and the welcome smell of cooking meats permeating the place.  Swanson was given in charge of a guard and escorted to a vacant tepee, where he was firmly bound, hand and foot, and thrown upon a pile of fur robes.