varmints'll be on us in another day. In God's name, whar is Clark?"

"Hold!" cried Fletcher Blount, "what's that?"

The broiling about the land court, too, was suddenly hushed. Men stopped
in their tracks, staring fixedly at three forms which had come out of the
woods into the clearing.

"Redskins, or there's no devil!" said Terrell.

Redskins they were, but not the blanketed kind that drifted every day
through the station. Their war-paint gleamed in the light, and the white
edges of the feathered head-dresses caught the sun. One held up in his
right hand a white belt,--token of peace on the frontier.

"Lord A'mighty!" said Fletcher Blount, "be they Cricks?"

"Chickasaws, by the headgear," said Terrell. "Davy, you've got a hoss.
Ride out and look em over."

Nothing loath, I put the mare into a gallop, and I passed over the very
place where Polly Ann had picked me up and saved my life long since. The
Indians came on at a dog trot, but when they were within fifty paces of
me they halted abruptly. The chief waved the white belt around his head.

"Davy!" says he, and I trembled from head to foot. How well I knew that
voice!

"Colonel Clark!" I cried, and rode up to him. "Thank God you are come,
sir," said I, "for the people here are land-mad, and the Northern Indians