Lieutenant Scott obtained his ascendency over his troop in several ways--first, by climbing a face of rock, and, with the assistance of Lieutenant Quay, taking an eagle from the nest it had built there. Every Indian in the reservation knew of that nest, and had long wanted the eagle’s feathers for a war-bonnet, but none of them had ever dared to climb the mirrorlike surface of the cliff, with the rocks below. The fame of this exploit spread, by what means it is hard to understand among people who have no newspapers or letters, but at beef issues, perhaps, or Messiah dances, or casual meetings on the prairie, which help to build up reputations and make the prowess of one chief known to those of all the other tribes, or the beauty of an Indian girl familiar. Then, following this exploit, three little Indian children ran away from school because they had been flogged, and tried to reach their father’s tent fifteen miles off on the reservation, and were found half-buried in the snow and frozen to death. One of them was without his heavier garments, which he had wrapped around his younger brother. The terrified school-teacher sent a message to the fort begging for two troops of cavalry to protect him from the wrath of the older Indians, and the post commander sent out Lieutenant Scott alone to treat with them. His words were much more effective than two troops of cavalry would have been, and the threatened outbreak was stopped. The school-master fled to the woods, and never came back. What the Indians saw of Lieutenant Scott at this crisis made them trust him for the future, and this and the robbery of the eagle’s nest explain partly, as do his gentleness and consideration, the remarkable hold he has over them. Some one was trying to tell one of the chiefs how the white man could bring lightning down from the sky, and make it talk for him from one end of the country to the other. “Oh yes,” the Indian said, simply, “that is quite true. Lieutenant Scott says so.”