return?"

Tusee only nods assent, for mere words are vain.

At early dawn the round camp-ground awakes into song. Men and women sing
of bravery and of triumph. They inspire the swelling breasts of the
painted warriors mounted on prancing ponies bedecked with the green
branches of trees.

Riding slowly around the great ring of cone-shaped tepees, here and
there, a loud-singing warrior swears to avenge a former wrong, and
thrusts a bare brown arm against the purple east, calling the Great
Spirit to hear his vow. All having made the circuit, the singing war
party gallops away southward.

Astride their ponies laden with food and deerskins, brave elderly women
follow after their warriors. Among the foremost rides a young woman in
elaborately beaded buckskin dress. Proudly mounted, she curbs with the
single rawhide loop a wild-eyed pony.

It is Tusee on her father's warhorse. Thus the war party of Indian men
and their faithful women vanish beyond the southern skyline.

A day's journey brings them very near the enemy's borderland. Nightfall
finds a pair of twin tepees nestled in a deep ravine. Within one lounge
the painted warriors, smoking their pipes and telling weird stories by
the firelight, while in the other watchful women crouch uneasily about
their center fire.

By the first gray light in the east the tepees are banished. They are