The Government, in the wisdom of blindness, had caused large placards to be posted at the entrances to the Agency grounds, bearing this order: “No collector of any description shall be allowed within a radius of half a mile from the pay station.” Accordingly, the burly Indian police strutted about in blue clothes and brass buttons obstreperously hustling the white creditors over the half-mile line, where they lounged in disconsolate groups along the dusty highway, playing mumble-peg, pitching horseshoes, and verbally sending the entire tribe to the devil. “Be cussed if I don’t hate to see the Twentieth Century kicked downstairs this way by the Dark Ages! Cussed if I don’t!” Thus a little wiry, pale-faced undertaker was heard to exclaim. His name was Comfort and he appeared to be a positive misery both to himself and to the delinquent relatives of the many good Indians he had laid away. Beside the little undertaker, there were lawyers, bankers’ clerks, grocerymen, liverymen, middlemen, butchers, doctors, and a half dozen politicians, there for the purpose of whipping the brown voters into line. There were men like wolves, bears, dogs, goats, roosters, beetles, scorpions. The little undertaker was the scorpion; a middleman was like a bear; there was a banker’s clerk like a goat; and a thin, angular, tall politician, with a body appropriately like an interrogation point, who slunk about like a hungry wolf. By ten o’clock the last stragglers of the tribe had arrived and the Agency grounds were filled with circles of sweating, brown men, women, and children, passing the stone pipe, tranquilly awaiting the coming of the Agent, whose name, upon a reservation, is a shout. By 10:30 the Agent appeared, riding down the dusty road from his residence. He was preceded by mounted police of pompous bearing, who shouted “The Agent! Make way for the Agent!” to the circles of their tribesmen who sat in the dust of the highway. A short while afterward the loungers at the half-mile line heard the voice of a crier at the door of the pay station, calling the first name on the roll in the golden autumnal silence. “_Nuzhee Mona! Geegoho!_” (Rain Walker! Come here!) Then the fact that Mr. Rainwalker, a leader of the tribe much indebted to the white man, was about to be paid, became volatile as ammonia, and the fluttering of time-yellowed legal paper was heard along the waiting line of creditors. “Owes me $6.46 with interest for four years!” “Me $25 and interest—outlawed!” “I’ve got the old cuss’s note for fifty!” “I buried his fourth and sixth wives,” squeaked the little undertaker, “seven and nine years ago, respectively!” Such exclamations ran down the line like a volley in different variations of vocal emphasis. “Wonder how he’s votin’,” mused the hungry wolf of a politician. “To the devil with politics!” roared the bear of a middleman; “I want the rent back I advanced him!”