"Captain Wallace, you will move on again with the advance, and we must keep near enough to be within call of Major Whiteside, for you remember how Big Foot escaped from Colonel Sumner, and this time there must be no mistake." "No, sir, there shall not be," said Captain Wallace, as he saluted and rode again to the front, where his troops pressed on toward Porcupine Creek, where it was hoped Major Whiteside would corral the cunning Indian chief. Having taken off his Indian togs, and bundled them up "for future reference," as he said, and gotten rid of his war-paint, Kit Carey reported for duty, looking very youthful without his long mustache, which had been the envy of so many of his brother officers. [Illustration: "'I do not bring you a Sioux prisoner, Colonel, but Lieut. Kit Carey.'" (See page 75)] After a halt for breakfast the command moved on once more, and Lieutenant Carey was sent on after Major Whiteside, to give him the advantage of his knowledge of the country. As Colonel Forsythe had expected, the first battalion headed Big Foot's band off during the day, and the Sioux finding themselves corraled wisely submitted. The soldiers encamped to the north of the Indian tepees, while a line of pickets was thrown out around the Sioux, and as Colonel Forsythe was within easy reach no one anticipated trouble to follow. When he found that Big Foot had hesitated too long to carry out his plot, the daring young chief, Red Hatchet, began to plan deeper mischief still. He went to the tepee of the medicine chief, and the two talked long and earnestly together through the night. First one brave of prominence would be sent for to come to the medicine tepee, and he would hear what the two had to say. Then he would glide away in silence, and in the darkness seek another warrior, mutter a few words, and he, too, would seek the medicine tepee. Thus warrior after warrior went through the night to the tepee in which Red Hatchet was planning a red deed of treachery to be carried out upon the morrow. "I don't half like that going one by one of warriors to the medicine tepee. If Red Hatchet is in there he is plotting mischief, that is certain," said Kit Carey to Captain Wallace, who met the lieutenant coming from a closer inspection of the Indian camp than could be obtained from the position occupied by the soldiers. CHAPTER XVII. BROKEN PLEDGES. There was an air of triumph among the soldiers that night in the camp. A feeling of satisfaction that the famous Chief Big Foot, with his band had been surrounded, and the morning would find them submissive captives. Still there were those wearing the shoulder-straps of an officer who were not so wholly satisfied that all would go well on the morrow. Old Indian fighters had their doubts about the pledges, and an officer, whose hair was turning gray, and who was a bachelor by reason of a fair one's broken pledge to him in the long ago, said in a cynical tone: