"Running Bear! Where is Running Bear?" The clerk looked around anxiously, for Running Bear was a prominent Indian, and was entitled to three cows, or as many as he could graft, and was never known to miss a beef issue. There were murmurs of wonder among the Indians at the absence of Running Bear, and the clerk was about to mark off his name, when he staggered out of the agent's house, groggy from the punishment he had received, with one eye a vivid green, and holding on to his jaw as if he was afraid of losing it. "Ah, there you are, Running Bear," said the clerk. "You look as if you had collided with a streak of lightning. What's the matter?" But the Indian only shook his head and pressed his jaw harder. "Reckon you've got the toothache, eh? Well, when you get your teeth fastened into a piece of fresh bull meat you'll be all right." Running Bear gave one look, in which all the concentrated hatred of a lifetime was to be seen. Then he turned away and went out to his tepee, where one of his squaws bound his jaw in a wet cloth. But the roll had been called, and the Indians stood expectant close to the gate of the corral. While the clerk stood up on the fence with his list he repeated the names and the number of cattle to which each Indian was entitled, and men inside the corral opened the gate and drove them out. As a frightened cow or angry steer was loosed from the corral it was met with shouts, wild and blood-curdling, from all the Indians, and its owner sprang upon his pony and took after the poor beast, driving it into the open beyond, and away from the house and corral. "Now begins the chase," said Ted. "We'll get out here where we will have a good view, but I don't think you will care to see much of it. It gets to be pretty--well, pretty raw after a while." "Why don't they kill their beef in a slaughterhouse and give them the meat, instead of turning the animals over to them alive?" asked Stella. "The Indians wouldn't stand for that," answered Ted. "This is the only sport they have in a year's time. You see, they are not permitted to leave the reservations to go far away to hunt big game, and they take it out in hunting, or playing they are hunting, these miserable cows." "I don't see any fun in that," said Miss Croffut. "You haven't the imagination of an Indian. You see, they make believe they are hunting buffalo again, and the chase is quite as exciting to them as if they were doing the real thing." By this time the prairie was covered with steers and cows, lumbering along in front of the Indians, who were pursuing them with shrill cries, shooting at them with bows and arrows or with rifles, striving always to wound them, but not to kill them too soon, for if they killed them right away they would miss the fun of the chase. This made the beef issue a carnival of brutality, and Ted soon saw that the girls were getting tired of it.