When Al first realized, with the advent of Colonel Sibley's troops into Fort Ridgely, that the Indians had been checked and the tide turned, and that the white men were really setting about regaining possession of the country, his first and greatest ambition was to set out at once for the rescue of Tommy; his second was to visit the lonely and ruined cabin twenty miles north of the fort and there give the remains of his father tender burial. But he soon found that difficulties lay in the way of accomplishing either of these desires. The army could not instantly spring forth as one man and rush to the rescue of his brother. The soldiers had to be prepared and provided for a campaign which, moreover, even when inaugurated, must be carefully and methodically carried out. Several hundred white captives, among whom it seemed almost certain that Tommy would be found, were in the possession of the Indians. If a precipitate attack should be made upon the latter their captives would, past a doubt, be massacred to a soul. Their release must be accomplished by diplomacy; the Indians must be made to realize that only by the safe delivery of their prisoners could they hope to mitigate the stern punishment which they had richly earned at the hands of the Government, and which would surely be meted out to them sooner or later. To accomplish the safe delivery of the captives might mean weeks of careful work on the part of the friendly Indians in inducing the hostile element to see the necessity for such action. It might require numerous councils and it might require fighting, properly prepared for. All this meant that if Al were to take personal part in the rescue of Tommy, they must stay at Fort Ridgely for some time to come; and to stay at Fort Ridgely meant that they must have some money. Here was the most distressing difficulty in the whole situation. The Briscoes had absolutely nothing left; they were penniless. Even their few household goods had been destroyed or carried away by the Indians and these goods, together with their buildings and the handful of live stock and farm implements on their claim, had constituted all their worldly possessions. They had not always been in such a precarious condition; in fact, two years before the period at which our story opens they would not have dreamed that they could ever be reduced to such circumstances as were theirs when we first saw them.