“Why is the Great Chief sad?” said Mushymush softly. “Does his soul still yearn for the blood of the palefaced teachers? Did not the scalping of two professors of geology in the Yale exploring party satisfy his warrior’s heart yesterday? Has he forgotten that Gardener and King are still to follow? Shall his own Mushymush bring him a botanist to-morrow? Speak, for the silence of my brother lies on my heart like the snow on the mountain, and checks the flow of my speech.” Still the proud Boy Chief sat silent. Suddenly he said, “Hiss!” and rose to his feet. Taking a long rifle from the ground he adjusted its sight. Exactly seven miles away on the slope of the mountain the figure of a man was seen walking. The Boy Chief raised the rifle to his unerring eye and fired. The man fell. A scout was dispatched to scalp and search the body. He presently returned. “Who was the paleface?” eagerly asked the chief. “A life insurance agent.” A dark scowl settled on the face of the chief. “I thought it was a book peddler.” “Why is my brother’s heart sore against the book peddler?” asked Mushymush. “Because,” said the Boy Chief fiercely, “I am again without my regular dime novel—and I thought he might have one in his pack. Hear me, Mushymush. The United States mails no longer bring me my ‘Young America’ or my ‘Boys’ and Girls’ Weekly.’ I find it impossible, even with my fastest scouts, to keep up with the rear of General Howard, and replenish my literature from the sutler’s wagon. Without a dime novel or a ‘Young America,’ how am I to keep up this Injin business?” Mushymush remained in meditation a single moment. Then she looked up proudly. “My brother has spoken. It is well. He shall have his dime novel. He shall know the kind of hairpin his sister Mushymush is.” And she arose and gamboled lightly as the fawn out of his presence. In two hours she returned. In one hand she held three small flaxen scalps, in the other “The Boy Marauder,” complete in one volume, price ten cents. “Three palefaced children,” she gasped, “were reading it in the tail-end of an emigrant wagon. I crept up to them softly. Their parents are still unaware of the accident,” and she sank helpless at his feet. “Noble girl!” said the Boy Chief, gazing proudly on her prostrate form; “and these are the people that a military despotism expects to subdue!” CHAPTER IV But the capture of several wagon-loads of commissary whiskey, and the destruction of two tons of stationery intended for the general commanding, which interfered with his regular correspondence with the War Department, at last awakened the United States military authorities to active exertion. A quantity of troops were massed before the Pigeon Feet encampment, and an attack was hourly imminent. “Shine your boots, sir?” It was the voice of a youth in humble attire, standing before the flap of the commanding general’s tent. The general raised his head from his correspondence.