The chief, however, paid Hano no further attention but turned on Sid those piercing black eyes that seemed to look through and through him. “Young white man, who are you and what is your business down here?” he demanded sternly. “My name is Sidney Colvin, son of Colonel Colvin, U. S. Army, retired,” answered Sid, facing the chief respectfully. The Apache’s eyes widened for an instant, startled, if such a stoic could be. “Colvin!” he exclaimed. Then all expression faded from his face. His hand, however, rose, involuntarily to touch a gold ornament that hung pendent from his neck. Sid thought for a moment that a play of memory seemed passing in the black inscrutable depths of his eyes. Under that eagle gaze, though, he himself could not long endure; in sheer embarrassment he dropped his own eyes until they, too, fastened themselves on the ornament. It was a gold twenty-dollar piece, pierced with a small hole in its upper rim and hanging from a rude chain of beaten silver. To Sid the curious thing about it was that it was the sole thing of white-man origin about the chief’s person. “And your business?--a prospector, I suppose,” said the chief, after another silent scrutinizing interval. “No, ethnologist,” replied Sid quietly. “Ethnologist!” echoed the chief. An expression of strong disgust crossed his stern face. “These learned fools who misrepresent and misunderstand the Indian worse than all other white men!--Pah!” Sid was more than astonished at this outburst. This Apache had evidently been well educated--once--perhaps at Carlisle. Why, then, had he come here to live with this wild band and become their chief? That could wait; at present he was glad to talk ethnology with this educated Indian, for Sid, too, had felt that disgust over the stupidity and lack of understanding displayed by the average ethnologist’s treatise indicated in the chief’s tones. “It’s astonishing how much they do misunderstand you,” agreed Sid. “Knowing as they should the Indian’s fundamental belief that all life, man, animal, and growing tree, has a soul which is the gift of the Great Mystery and returns to Him in the end, how _can_ they report your Indian ceremonials as mere spirit worship, devil worship, sun worship--Gad! It makes my blood boil!” Sid spoke vehemently, warming up as his own indignation over the vapid misunderstandings and the utter lack of comprehension of most ethnologists’ reports enraged him. “Chief, you know, and I know the Great Mystery! As one of your own great men has said, ‘He who may be met alone, face to face, in the shadowy aisles of the forest, on the sunlit bosom of the great prairie, upon dizzy spires and pinnacles of naked rock, or yonder in the jeweled vault of the night sky!’ Because the Indian is too reverent to speak of Him by name, our worthy ethnologists report that this and that tribe believes in no supreme God, only in spirits--bosh!”