Cairness nodded. He thought it very likely. "The Sun and the Darkness and the Winds were all listening. He promised to pay me _dos reales_ each day. To prove to you that I am now telling the truth, here is what he wrote for me." He held it out to Cairness, a dirty scrap of wrapping-paper scrawled over with senseless words. "Yes," said Cairness, examining it, "but this has no meaning." "That is a promise," the Indian insisted, "to pay me _dos reales_ a day if I would cut hay for him." The White explained carefully that it was not a contract, that it was nothing at all, in fact. "Then he lied," said the buck, and tucked the scrap back under his head band. "They all lie. I worked for him two weeks. I worked hard. And each night when I asked him for money he would say to me that to-morrow he would pay me. When all his hay was cut he laughed in my face. He would pay me nothing." He seemed resigned enough about it. Cairness gave a grunt that was startlingly savage--so much so that he realized it, and shook himself slightly as a man does who is trying to shake himself free from a lethargy that is stealing over him. "And then, there was the trouble about the cows. They promised us one thousand, and they gave us not quite six hundred. And those--the Dawn and the Sky hear that what I tell you is true--and those were so old we could not use them." Cairness nodded. He knew that the Interior Department had sent an agent out to investigate that complaint, and that the agent had gone his way rejoicing and reporting that all was well with the Indian and honest with the contractor. It was not true. Every one who knew anything about it knew that. Cairness supposed that also was the work of the politicians. But there are things one cannot make plain to a savage having no notions of government. The buck went on, the while he held a piece of venison in his dirty hand and dragged at it with his teeth, to say that there was a feeling of great uneasiness upon the reservation. The Chiricahuas could see that there was trouble between the officials, both military and civil, and the government. They did not know what it was. They did not understand that the harassed general, whose word--and his alone--had their entire belief, nagged and thwarted, given authority and then prevented from enforcing it, had rebelled at last, had asked to be relieved, and had been refused. But they drew in with delight the air of strife and unrest. It was the one they loved best, there could and can be no doubt about that.