For a few minutes there was great commotion among some of the women in camp, a few making preparations to strike tents, and the rest hurrying off to saddle their husbands’ horses. The braves did not do anything except bring their weapons out of the tepees and stand by until their nags were brought up. Carl, seeing that no attention was paid to himself, went out of the tepee and took his stand by the squawman’s side.

“Do you see those men who are sitting in front of their wigwams smoking their pipes?” said Harding. “Well they are those who don’t believe in the Ghost Dance. The soldiers say they don’t want them to engage in it, and that is enough for them.”

“They will be saved when the world comes to an end as well as those who do believe in it, will they not?” said Carl.

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“Not much, they won’t,” answered the squawman indignantly. “This world is going to be destroyed and a new one made in the place of it; and those men, who are perfectly willing that the whites should come here and steal all their land and drive away the buffalo, will go somewhere, and no one will ever see them again.”

“Where’s my horse?” asked Carl suddenly. “Or are you going to leave me here?”

“Not as anybody knows of,” said the squawman with a laugh. “You must go on with me up to the other camp. I have been trying for a long time to get hold of you, and now that I have got you I am going to hold fast to you.”

“How far is that camp from here?”

“About thirty-five miles.”

“Did you tell one of the women to saddle my horse?”

“No, because the horse don’t belong to me. The one who took your horse by the bridle and stopped you is the one who laid claim to the horse.”

“And who has my rifle and revolver?”

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“They went to some others of the party. Oh, you will never see them again.”

Carl was not much disappointed to hear this. He knew that his valuables were all gone, having become the property of those who helped capture him, but there were certain other things he had that he intended to hold fast to—the revolvers in the breast of his jacket. So long as they were not discovered and taken away from him he would not give up all hope of some day making a dash for his freedom.

“Have you not an extra horse, so that I can ride?” asked Carl.

“No; the women have got all the rest—and they need them, too. You will have to walk; I don’t see any way for you to get around it.”

The horse of the squawman had by this time been brought up, and he swung himself into the saddle, first making a motion to Carl to keep close by his side. As they got a little way out of the camp Carl saw that the crier’s voice had been obeyed, for they fell in behind a long row of Indians who were already taking Page 132 their way toward the new camping-ground. They were mostly braves, the women having been left behind to strike the tepees. The squawman did not exchange a word with any of them, and neither did Harding converse with him as freely as he had done heretofore. He did not want to let the bucks see how familiar he was with a prisoner.

The boy was not accustomed to travelling so far on foot, and before their journey was ended he was about as tired as he could well be. At length, to his immense relief, he discovered the camp within plain sight of him. It was situated on a plain which seemed to have no end, with high rolling hills on three sides of it, and on the outskirts were several “sweat-houses” in which the braves purified themselves while making ready for the dance, and in the centre was perhaps a quarter of an acre of ground on which the grass was completely worn off. This had been done by the braves while learning the Ghost Dance from Kicking Bull. There were a large number of tepees scattered around the edge of the plain, but Carl had witnessed the sight Page 133 so often that he barely took a second look at them. What he wanted was to get somewhere and sit down.

“I’ll bet that the men who dance here will get dust enough in their mouths to keep them from telling the truth for months,” said Carl. “Five days! That’s a long time to keep it up.”

“It is sometimes called the ‘dragging dance,’” said the squawman. “The men get so tired after a while that they can’t lift their feet. Now we will pick out a good place for my tepee, and then we will sit down. You act as though you were tired.”

Harding kept on for half a mile farther, picked out a spot that would do him, dismounted, and pulled his never-failing pipe from his pocket. Carl thought he could enjoy a smoke and passed his tobacco-bag to the squawman. The latter ran the weed through his fingers and praised its purity.

“We don’t get any such tobacco out here,” said he. “We have to eke it out by smoking bark with it. Say, Carl, how much do you get for scouting for that fort?”

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“I don’t get anything,” said Carl.

“Do you get up at all hours of the night and run around for that man for nothing?” asked the squawman in astonishment.

“Oh, that’s no trouble. When I want money I can easily get it.”

“That is what comes of your having more money than you want,” said Harding; and it was plain that he was getting angry over it. “If I had one quarter of what you have got, I would leave this country altogether.”

It was useless for Carl to tell the squawman that the only way for him to get money was to go to work and earn it, for he had tried that plan on him while he was herding cattle for his father; so he said nothing. He leaned his elbows on his knees and watched the women as they came up and selected places for their tepees. When the squawman’s was put up, Carl found that he was in a position to see the Ghost Dance without going away from it. He would learn something more about it, then.

“Have your women got your tepee all fixed?” asked Carl. “Well, I am hungry.”

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The squawman was hungry himself, and he had ordered the fire to be built and the iron pot to be placed over it. By the time that Harding had smoked his pipe he arose to his feet with the r............