Pausing for an instant where the horses were picketed, I once more heard her voice. Although in a whisper, it was riper, fuller and more womanly than when it last sounded on my ears. "Let my brother take his horse." "Why should he do so?" I asked in a tone no louder than hers had been. "My brother must have many miles between himself and this place, before the dawn." "And why?" "Clo-ke-ta's master"--the intonation of this epithet was scornful, and, as it seemed to me, full of regret, which she disdained suppressing--"has his braves gathered around." "Is Clo-ke-ta, then, married?" I could not help the passionate inflexion with which I framed this whisper. For the moment, I had not only forgotten the wife who had so recently joined me, but the very information the Cheyenne woman had just given me. "The daughter of Par-a-wau could not go childless to the grave." "Certainly not," I answered mechanically. My memory had bridged the intervening years between the present and the time when the parent of Clo-ke-ta, as well as Old Spotted Tail, had done me the honor of wishing to enroll me as a Cheyenne chief. "Will my brother do as Clo-ke-ta has bidden him?" The impatience of the request was more like her father's manner and voice than anything she had yet said. It recalled me to the life of my present. "And who is Clo-ke-ta's husband?" "A Bannock chief." "The Indians from whom I am then to fly are the Bannocks?" "My brother is right." "Does not Clo-ke-ta know that the braves with her brother are numerous." "The Bannocks who are waiting for the dawn, number more than the leaves of the sage-brush my brother has seen, before he laid himself down to rest." Figurative as the expression was, there was no mistaking its significance. We were decidedly in for it, if her words were true, in even the thousandth or ten-thousandth part of her somewhat extensive style of reckoning the forces of our enemy. However, my experience of the Indian character for veracity had greatly modified the faith which, when I first knew her, I might have placed in her words. Considering our former relations, it would seem to be a matter of difficulty to make her understand this. But life in the hills and plains of the West considerably impairs sentimental delicacy in conversation, even with one whom a man had so narrowly escaped from wedding, as I had her. After a brief pause, I said: "What the white man sees, he believes." "What says my brother?" "Let Clo-ke-ta prove her words, to his eyes!" "The white chief does not think Clo-ke-ta has told him the truth!" Her whisper was shapen so contemptuously that, at the moment, I could almost have bitten out my tongue in wrath at what it had given breath to. However, it was of importance that I should know whether her information had been exaggerated or not. I consequently replied: "He does not."