Page:Hendryx--Connie Morgan with the Mounted.djvu/83

Rh "You are free to move about the village, only do not seek to escape. My young men will watch you, and if you leave the village, you shall surely die. If at the end of eight sleeps none of those who are wounded have been stricken with the Red Death, then will the Yellow Knives swear a great friendship for the white men, and you may return to the land of your people. But, if these are stricken, then shall you both be burned. Come, we shall take Spotted Dog and the small white man to the lodge of Long Raven." But when they entered the lodge of Spotted Dog, they found it empty—and Spotted Dog was nowhere to be found.

"I always said it!" exclaimed Sergeant McKeever, as he lay propped on his elbow upon a couch in the barracks at Dawson, and listened to Corporal Rickey's account of what happened that night at the council fire of the Yellow Knives, "Brains an' nerve is worth more than beef, anyways you take it."

"Sure are!" assented Rickey, chuckling with laughter. "You should of seen that medicine man dancin' around with his hair all a-fire, howlin'