“You mean to go without permission?” said Powell, sternly. “Lord, no! He'll shoot me. That's all.” The two lieutenants pondered. “And it's to-day,” continued Cutler, plaintively, “that he should be gettin' hanged in Cheyenne.” Still the lieutenants pondered, while the wagon-master inspected a photograph of Marie Rose as Marguerite. “I have it!” exclaimed Powell. “Let's kill him.” “How about the commanding officer?” “He'd back us--but we'll tell him afterwards. Cutler, can you find Toussaint?” “If I get the time.” “Very well, you're off duty till you do. Then report to me at once.” Just after guard-mounting two days later, Cutler came in without knocking. Toussaint was found. He was down on the river now, beyond the stockade. In ten minutes the wagon-master and the two lieutenants were rattling down to the agency in an ambulance, behind four tall blue government mules. These were handily driven by a seventeen-year-old boy whom Balwin had picked up, liking his sterling American ways. He had come West to be a cow-boy, but a chance of helping to impress Red Cloud had seemed still dearer to his heart. They drew up at the agency store, and all went in, leaving the boy nearly out of his mind with curiosity, and pretending to be absorbed with the reins. Presently they came out, Balwin with field-glasses. “Now,” said he, “where?” “You see the stockade, sir?” “Well?” said Powell, sticking his chin on Cutler's shoulder to look along his arm as he pouted. But the scout proposed to be deliberate. “Now the gate of the stockade is this way, ain't it?” “Well, well?” “You start there and follow the fence to the corner--the left corner, towards the river. Then you follow the side that's nearest the river down to the other corner. Now that corner is about a hundred yards from the bank. You take a bee-line to the bank and go down stream, maybe thirty yards. No; it'll be forty yards, I guess. There's a lone pine-tree right agin the edge.” The wagon-master stopped. “I see all that,” said Lieutenant Balwin, screwing the field-glasses. “There's a buck and a squaw lying under the tree.” “Naw, sir,” drawled Cutler, “that ain't no buck. That's him lying in his Injun blanket and chinnin' a squaw.” “Why, that man's an Indian, Cutler. I tell you I can see his braids.” “Oh, he's rigged up Injun fashion, fust rate, sir. But them braids of his ain't his'n. False hair.” The lieutenants passed each other the fieldglasses three times, and glared at the lone pine and the two figures in blankets. The boy on the ambulance was unable to pretend any longer, and leaned off his seat till he nearly fell. “Well,” said Balwin, “I never saw anything look more like a buck Sioux. Look at his paint. Take the glasses yourself, Cutler.” But Cutler refused. “He's like an Injun,” he said. “But that's just what he wants to be.” The scout's conviction bore down their doubt. They were persuaded. “You can't come with us, Cutler,” said Powell. “You must wait for us here.”