The storekeeper entered without waiting. Colonel Cummings stood in the centre of the room. It was the room known as his library, in compliment to a row of dog-eared volumes that had somehow survived many a wet bivouac and rough march. But it resembled a museum. In the corners, on the walls beneath the bulky heads of buffalo and the branching antlers of elk, there were swords, tomahawks, bows and arrows, strings of glass wampum, cartridge belts, Indian bonnets, drums and shields, and a miscellany of warlike odds and ends. To-day, the room was further littered by maps, which covered the table, the benches, and the whole length of an army cot. Over one of these hung the colonel, making imaginary journeys with the end of a dead cigar. He turned swiftly to Lounsbury, and caught him by the shoulders. "John," he said, before the other could speak, "I need an interpreter. You've been about here for years--do you know one?" "There's Soggy, that Phil Kearney fellow----" The colonel gave a grunt of disgust. "In jail at Omaha," he said. "Played cards with a galoot who had some aces in his boot-tops. Plugged him." "What's the matter with your Rees?" "That's just it! You see, that bunch of Sioux out there"--he jerked his head toward the stockade--"helped in a bit of treachery two summers ago. Rounded up some friendly Rees at a dance and scalped 'em. So--there's poison for you! In this business on hand I couldn't trust even my head scout." He began pacing the floor. "Anyway, sign language, when there are terms to be made and kept, isn't worth a hang!" "I wish I could suggest a man," said Lounsbury. "Fact is, Colonel, I'm terribly worried myself. I came to ask you for help in some trouble----" The old soldier threw up his hands. "Trouble!" he cried. "Why I'm simply daft with it! Look at that!" He pointed to the farthest side of the room. It was dimly lighted there. Lounsbury stepped forward and peered down--then recoiled, as startled as if he had happened upon something dead. On the floor was a man--a man whose back was bent rounding, and whose arms and legs were hugged up against his abdomen and chest. Torso and limbs were alike, frightfully shrunken; the hands, mere claws. Lounsbury could not see the face. But the hair was uncovered, and it was the hair that made him "goose-flesh" from head to heel. It was white--not the white of old age, with glancing tints of silver or yellow--but the dead white of an agony that had withered it to the roots. Circling it, and separating the scalp from the face and neck, ran a narrow fringe that was still brown, as if, changing in a night, it had lacked full time for completion.