Daily did those praises and that enthusiasm reach Lillian, in whose loving eyes I grew to be a legendary hero. Aunt Atkins said to her: “While your Pole is with you, you may sleep out in the rain, for he won’t let the drops fall on you.” And the heart rose in my maiden from those praises. During the whole time of crossing I could give her hardly a moment, and could only say hurriedly with my eyes what my lips could not utter. All day I was on horseback, now on one bank, now on the other, now in the water. I was in a hurry to advance as soon as possible from those thick yellow waters, which were bearing down with them rotten trees, bunches of leaves, grass, and malodorous mud from Dakota, infectious with fever. Besides this, the people were wearied immensely, from continual watching; the horses grew sick from unwholesome water, which we could not use until we had kept it in charcoal a number of hours. At last, after eight days’ time, we found ourselves on the right bank of the river without having broken a wagon, and with the loss of only seven head of mules and horses. That day, however, the first arrows fell, for my men killed, and afterward, according to the repulsive habit of the plains, scalped three Indians, who had been trying to push in among the mules. In consequence of this deed an embassy of six leading warriors of the Bloody Tracks, belonging to the Pawnee stock, visited us on the following day. They sat down at our fire with tremendous importance, demanding horses and mules in return for the dead men, declaring that, in case of refusal, five hundred warriors would attack us immediately. I made no great account of those five hundred warriors, since I had the train in order and defended with intrenchments. I saw well that that embassy had been sent merely because those wild people had caught at the first opportunity to extort something without an attack, in the success of which they had lost faith. I should have driven them away in one moment, had I not wished to exhibit them to Lillian. In fact, while they were sitting at the council-fire motionless, with eyes fixed on the flame, she, concealed in the wagon, was looking with alarm and curiosity at their dress trimmed at the seams with human hair, their tomahawks adorned with feathers on the handles, and at their faces painted black and red, which meant war. In spite of these preparations, however, I refused their demand sharply, and, passing from a defensive to an offensive rôle, declared that if even one mule disappeared from the train, I would go to their tribe myself and scatter the bones of their five hundred warriors over the prairie.