"No reason at all, so far as I could learn. His wife sat on the ground not far away, wailing in deep despair. What treatment she had suffered I do not know. Naturally, I ordered the men to release the old man, and when they refused I cut his bands. The ruffians were furious with rage, and threatened to tie me up and burn me, too. By this time I was too angry to fear anything. 'If you do, you better pulverize the buttons on my uniform, for the United States government will demand a head for every one of them.' Had I been a civilian they would have killed me." "They wouldn't have dared!" Elsie shuddered. "Such men dare do anything when they are safe from discovery--and there is always the Indian to whom a deed of that sort can be laid." "Did they release the old man?" "Yes; and he and his wife camped along with me for several days, and their devotion to me was pathetic. Finally I came to understand that he considered himself dead, so far as his tribe was concerned. 'My life belongs to you,' he said. I was just beginning the sign language at that time and I couldn't get very far with him, but I made him understand that I gave his life back to him. He left me at last and returned to the tribe. Thereafter, every redman I met called me friend, and patiently sat while I struggled to learn his language. As I grew proficient they told me things they had concealed from all white men. I ceased to be an enemy. I became an adviser, a chief." "Did you ever see the old man again?" "Oh yes. He was my guide on several hunting expeditions. Poor old Siyeh, he died of small-pox. 'The white man's disease,' he called it, bitterly. He wanted to see me, but when he understood that I would be endangered thereby, he said: 'It is well--I will die alone; but tell him I fold my hands on my breast and his hand is between my palms.'" The soldier's voice grew hard and dry as the memory of the old man's death returned upon him. Elsie shuddered with a new emotion. "You make my head whirl--you and the night. Did that determine your course with regard to them?" "Yes. I resolved to get at their hearts--their inner thoughts--and my commanders put me forward from time to time as interpreter, where I could serve both the army and the redman. In some strange way all the Northwest tribes came to know of me, and I could go where few men could follow me. It is curious, but they never did seem strange to me. From the first time I met an Indian I felt that he was a man like other men--a father, a son, a brother, like anybody else. Naturally, when the plan for enlisting redmen into the cavalry came to be worked out, I was chosen to command a troop of Shi-an-nay. I received my promotion at that time. My detail as Indian agent came from the same cause, I suppose. I was known to be a friend of the redman, and the department is now experimenting with 'Curtis of the Gray-Horse Troop,'" he added, with a smile. "Such is the story of my life." "How long will you remain Indian agent?"