“It is much meat,” replied Chief Pike. Baroney and the medicine-man were chasing hither-thither. The Pawnees were killing. Chief Pike galloped away to see. But he would see no arrows buried deeper than these. After the hunt was over, the Pawnees cut up their animals, and the Pike party cut up the big elk. With Scar Head riding proudly, they four caught the column under the second chief. The camp feasted, this night, upon a spot where the Spanish also had camped. There was only one alarm call, from the guard, on account of two Pawnees who came in by mistake. They had not eaten for three days and thought that this was a camp of their own people. Chief Pike sent them out again, with food for a sick comrade. He was kind as well as brave. VI LIEUTENANT WILKINSON SAYS GOOD-BY “Chief Pike asks you to go back with one man and find John Sparks.” These were the words of Baroney, to Scar Head, who was just finishing breakfast so as to be ready to march. A number of days had passed since the elk hunt, and several things had happened. Although the Americans were brave, the Great Spirit seemed to be angry with them for marching through the country. He gave them hungry camps, without wood and water. He sent rain on them, and made them sick. Chief Pretty Bird and another Osage man had left. They said that they wanted better hunting――but it was plain that they were afraid. And on the same day the Spanish trail had been blotted out by buffalo hoofs, and the Americans had lost it. By the talk, this was bad. According to what Scar Head understood, Chief Pike depended upon the Spanish trail to guide him by the best road into the south and to the Comanches. The Spanish knew this country better than the Americans did. The rain kept falling, and the men straggled. Yesterday afternoon the warrior Sparks had dropped behind. He had pains in his joints, which the medicine-man had not been able to cure: “rheumatism.” He could not ride a horse and he could scarcely walk, using his gun as a crutch. Last night he had not come into camp. The Spanish trail was lost, again; and Sparks was lost, too. Scar Head was glad to go back and look for him. He liked Sparks. He liked all the men and was getting to know them by their names: queer names. Each man had two――one for each other and one for the chiefs. There was “Jake” and “Carter”; the same man. And “Jerry” and “Jackson”; and “Tom” and “Dougherty”; and “John” and “Brown”; and “Hugh” and “Menaugh”; and “Bill” and “Meek”; and “Joe” and “Ballenger”; and the others. The last two were head warriors, called “sergeant.” The medicine-man’s names were “John” and “Doctor Robinson.” The second chief’s names were “the left’nant” and “Lieutenant Wilkinson.” Chief Pike was “the cap’n” and “Lieutenant Pike.” The warriors spoke only American, but they knew Indian ways. The most of them, Baroney said, had been on a long journey before with Lieutenant Pike, far into the north up a great river, into the country of the Sioux.