"By the eternal!" said Jack Terrell, "if the yea'th was ter swaller 'em up, they'd keep on a-dickerin in hell." "Something's got to be done," Captain Harrod put in gloomily; "the red varmints'll be on us in another day. In God's name, whar is Clark?" "Hold!" cried Fletcher Blount, "what's that?" The broiling about the land court, too, was suddenly hushed. Men stopped in their tracks, staring fixedly at three forms which had come out of the woods into the clearing. "Redskins, or there's no devil!" said Terrell. Redskins they were, but not the blanketed kind that drifted every day through the station. Their war-paint gleamed in the light, and the white edges of the feathered head-dresses caught the sun. One held up in his right hand a white belt,--token of peace on the frontier. "Lord A'mighty!" said Fletcher Blount, "be they Cricks?" "Chickasaws, by the headgear," said Terrell. "Davy, you've got a hoss. Ride out and look em over." Nothing loath, I put the mare into a gallop, and I passed over the very place where Polly Ann had picked me up and saved my life long since. The Indians came on at a dog trot, but when they were within fifty paces of me they halted abruptly. The chief waved the white belt around his head. "Davy!" says he, and I trembled from head to foot. How well I knew that voice! "Colonel Clark!" I cried, and rode up to him. "Thank God you are come, sir," said I, "for the people here are land-mad, and the Northern Indians are crossing the Ohio." He took my bridle, and, leading the horse, began to walk rapidly towards the station. "Ay," he answered, "I know it. A runner came to me with the tidings, where I was building a fort on the Mississippi, and I took Willis here and Saunders, and came." I glanced at my old friends, who grinned at me through the berry-stain on their faces. We reached a ditch through which the rain of the night before was draining from the fields Clark dropped the bridle, stooped down, and rubbed his face clean. Up he got again and flung the feathers from his head, and I thought that his eyes twinkled despite the sternness of his look. "Davy, my lad," said he, "you and I have seen some strange things together. Perchance we shall see stranger to-day." A shout went up, for he had been recognized. And Captain Harrod and Ray and Terrell and Cowan (who had just ridden in) ran up to greet him and press his hand. He called them each by name, these men whose loyalty had been proved, but said no word more nor paused in his stride until he had reached the edge of the mob about the land court. There he stood for a full minute, and we who knew him looked on silently and waited.