Page:Lost with Lieutenant Pike (1919).djvu/79

 *swered. "The horse may have only strayed. A present might find him again."

"The horse is ours," reproved Chief Pike. "I shall not buy it twice. If the Pawnees are honest and wish to be friends with their American brothers, they will return the horse to me. I shall expect it, to-morrow. Adios."

"Adios," grunted White Wolf, wrapping his robe about him.

Chief Pike and Baroney the interpreter galloped for the column. They left the soldier. Now he was one American among all the Pawnees, but he did not act afraid, either.

He sat his horse and gazed about him with a smile. He was a stout, chunky man, in stained blue clothes. His face was partly covered with red hair, and the hair on his head, under his slouched black hat, was red, too. He carried a long-barreled heavy gun in the hollow of one arm.

"Get down," signed White Wolf. "Come into my lodge." And he waved the crowding warriors back.

The red-haired soldier got down and entered the lodge. Here he was safe. Everything of his was safe as long as he was a guest of a lodge. Scar Head slipped in after him, but White Wolf stayed outside.