The two great men strolled leisurely, arm in arm, down the dusty road to the pay station, stopping often to shake hands with the Omahas, and radiating smiles like small human suns. When they had reached the pay station, Mr. Meekleman approached the Agent, busy signing checks, and said in his big, clear, slow voice, that it might be heard by the lounging Indians: “Major, I wish you would announce to the gentlemen that I want to talk to them this evening over at Fire Chief lodge. Tell the gentlemen that I am very much grieved for them, and that I shall endeavour to right their wrongs;” and he raised his heavy brows and condescendingly smiled upon the brown loungers, while the Agent instructed a policeman to make the announcement. That evening a party consisting of the Agent, Messrs. Meekleman and McBarty, and several local politicians, proceeded on foot to Fire Chief lodge, which is a large octagonal shack placed in a lonesome valley a mile distant from the Agency. “Brace up, Mac!” said Meekleman, as the two walked along the lonesome prairie road. “To-night I shall have the honour to make a man of you—the Honourable James McBarty! Have a cigar and try to keep cool.” “Yes, thanks. I was just feeling a little surprised at the lonesome road that seems to lead to Congress—that was all. Do you really suppose we can win them over?” “Well, you shall see,” returned Meekleman. “Follow my suit and don’t make faces at the soup; for one really must drink soup, you know, to be Congressman from this district. I say, Mac, did you ever smoke killikinick? Well, anyway, I advise you to smoke it to-night till the back of your neck aches. Ha, ha! There is really no royal road to Congress, Mac!” And Meekleman slapped the candidate upon the shoulder and filled the great prairie silence with jovial laughter. As the party neared the lodge, from which the light of the fire within streamed out through the windows into the moon haze, they heard the sound of the drum and the singing that accompanies an Indian feast; a wild melodious flight of notes, threaded with the snarl of the drum like the beat of a fevered temple, rising in ecstasy, like the wail of a fitful night wind in the scrub oaks of a bluff, and falling suddenly to die in a guttural note like the burr of a wounded rattlesnake. A barbaric music filled with the sounds of Nature and old as the wrinkled prairie! “This,” said Meekleman, stopping near the entrance to listen to the deep, beautiful voices within, “This, McBarty, is the Indian of romance. Now for the bitter truth—and the soup!”