Meantime, having stationed Field on the north front, with orders to note every movement of the Sioux, and having assigned Clayton to the minor duty of watching the south front and the flanks, Ray was moving cheerily among his men, speeding from cover to cover, suggesting here, helping there, alert, even joyous in manner. "We couldn't have a better roost, lads," he said. "We can stand off double their number easy. We can hold out a week if need be, but you bet the major will be reaching out after us before we're two days older. Don't waste your shots. Coax them close in. Don't fire at a galloping Indian beyond three hundred yards. It's waste of powder and lead." Cheerily, joyously they answered him, these his comrades, his soldier children, men who had fought with him, many of their number, in a dozen fields, and men who would stand by him, their dark-eyed little captain, to the last. Even the youngest trooper of the fifty seemed inspired by the easy, laughing confidence of the lighter hearts among their number, or the grim, matter of fact pugnacity of the older campaigners. It was significant, too, that the Indians seemed so divided in mind as to the next move. There was loud wrangling and much disputation going on in that savage council to the north. Stabber's braves and Lame Wolf's followers seemed bitterly at odds, for old hands in the fast-growing rifle pits pointed out on one side as many as half a dozen of the former's warriors whom they recognized and knew by sight, while Ray, studying the shifting concourse through his glasses, could easily see Stabber himself raging among them in violent altercation with a tall, superbly built and bedizened young brave, a sub-chief, apparently, who for his part, seemed giving Stabber as good as he got. Lame Wolf was not in sight at all. He might still be far from the scene, and this tall warrior be acting as his representative. But whoever or whatever he was he had hearty following. More than three-fourths of the wrangling warriors in the group seemed backing him. Ray, after a few words to Sergeant Winsor, crawled over beside his silent and absorbed young second in command, and, bringing his glasses to bear, gazed across a low parapet of sand long and fixedly at the turbulent throng a thousand yards away. "It's easy to make out Stabber," he presently spoke. "One can almost hear that foghorn voice of his. But who the mischief is that red villain opposing him? I've seen every one of their chiefs in the last five years. All are men of forty or more. This fellow can't be a big chief. He looks long years younger than most of 'em, old Lame Wolf, for instance, yet he's cheeking Stabber as if he owned the whole outfit." Another long stare, then again--"Who the mischief can he be?"