The amazed Sioux policeman gasped. "You not shoot?" he said. "But he hit that man's horse--all the same hit your horse, all the same hit you." "Right. Quite right," growled Stirling. "All the same hit Uncle Sam. But we soldier devils have orders to temporize." His eye rested hard and serious on the party in the water as he went on speaking with jocular unconcern. "Tem-po-rize, Johnny," said he. "You savvy temporize?" "Ump! Me no savvy." "Bully for you, Johnny. Too many syllables. Well, now! he's hit that horse again. One more for the court of inquiry. Steady, men! There's Two Whistles switching now. They ought to call that lad Young Dog Tray. And there's a chap in paint fooling with his gun. If any more do that--it's very catching--Yes, we're going to have a circus. Attention! Now what's that, do you suppose?" An apparition, an old chief, came suddenly on the other bank, pushing through the crowd, grizzled and little and lean, among the smooth, full-limbed young blood. They turned and saw him, and slunk from the tones of his voice and the light in his ancient eye. They swerved and melted among the cottonwoods, so that the ford's edge grew bare of dusky bodies and looked sandy and green again. Cheschapah saw the wrinkled figure coming, and his face sank tame. He stood uncertain in the stream, seeing his banded companions gone and the few white soldiers firm on the bank. The old chief rode to him through the water, his face brightened with a last flare of command. "Make your medicine!" he said. "Why are the white men not blind? Is the medicine bad to-day?" And he whipped his son's horse to the right, and to the left he slashed the horse of Two Whistles, and, whirling the leather quirt, drove them cowed before him and out of the stream, with never a look or word to the white men. He crossed the sandy margin, and as a man drives steers to the corral, striking spurs to his horse and following the frightened animals close when they would twist aside, so did old Pounded Meat herd his son down the valley. "Useful old man," remarked Stirling; "and brings up his children carefully. Let's get these prisoners along." "How rural the river looks now!" Haines said, as they left the deserted bank. So the Sioux went home in peace, the lieutenants, with their command of twenty, returned to the post, and all white people felt much obliged to Pounded Meat for his act of timely parental discipline--all except one white person. Sol Kinney sauntered into the agency store one evening. "I want ten pounds of sugar," said he, "and navy plug as usual. And say, I'll take another bottle of the Seltzer fizz salts. Since I quit whiskey," he explained, "my liver's poorly." He returned with his purchase to his cabin, and set a lamp in the window. Presently the door opened noiselessly, and Cheschapah came in. "Maybe you got that now?" he said, in English.