The Virginian standing by the seated, brooding man clapped him twice on the shoulders, gently. It was enough. They were very fast friends. “I know,” said Scipio in response. “Thank y’u. But I’d hate for him to have me beat.” It was the doctor who now furnished information that would have relieved any reasonable man from a sense of failure. The doctor was excited because his view of our faith in Indian matters was again justified by a further instance. “Oh, yes!” he said. “Just give those people at Washington time, and every step they’ve taken from the start will be in the mud puddle of a lie. Uncle’s in the game all right. He’s been meditating how to serve his country and increase his income. There’s a railroad at the big end of his notion, but the entering wedge seems only to be a new store down in the corner of this reservation. You see, it has been long settled by the sacredest compacts that two stores shall be enough here--the Post-trader’s and the Agent’s--but the dear Indians need a third, Uncle says. He has told the Senate and the Interior Department and the White House that a lot of them have to travel too far for supplies. So now Washington is sure the Indians need a third store. The Post-trader and the Agent are stopping at the Post to-night. They got East too late to hold up the job. If Horacles opens that new store, the Agent might just as well shut up his own.” “Ain’t y’u going to look at my leg?” was all the reply that Scipio made. The doctor laughed. It was to examine the leg that he had come, and he had forgotten all about it. “You can forget all about it, too,” he told Scipio when he had finished. “Go back to Sunk Creek when you like. Go back to full work next week, say. Your wicked body is sound again. A better man would unquestionably have died.” But the cheery doctor could not cheer the unreasonable Scipio. In the morning the complacent little Horacles made known to all the world his perfected arrangements. Directly the Agent had safely turned his back and gone to Washington, his disloyal clerk had become doubly busy. He had at once perceived that this was a comfortable time for him to hurry his new rival store into readiness and be securely established behind its counter before his betrayed employer should return. In this last he might not quite succeed; the Agent had come back a day or two sooner than Horacles had calculated, but it was a trifle; after all, he had carried through the small part of his uncle’s scheme which he had been sent here to do. Inside that building in the far corner of the reservation, once rumored to be connected with the Quartermaster’s department, he would now sell luxuries and necessities to the Indians at a price cheaper than his employer’s, and his employer’s store would henceforth be empty of customers. Perhaps the sweetest moment that Horacles had known for many weeks was when he said to Scipio:-- “I’m writing Uncle about it to-day.”