joined her mistress there was a little rose in each cheek, and a
gleam in her faintly humid eye.

"Sending a message to her chief?" Annette said, looking at the
bright, brown beauty. "She need not have blushed at giving her
message to the brave; he thought that she was an Indian lad."

"Oh, I forgot," Julie murmured; and she pressed her deftly booted
feet against the flanks of her pony.

The savage was, evidently, not enamoured of the lonesome journey
back to his chief, for rumour had peopled every square mile of all
the plains with warriors, and with hidden assassins. And spread
across that arc of the sky where the sun had just gone down, were
troops of clouds, of crimson, and bronze and pink; and in their
curious shapes the solitary rider saw mighty horses, bestrode by
giant riders, all congregated to join in the war. He knew that these
were the spirits of chiefs who had ruled the plains long before the
stranger with the pale face came; they always assembled when great
battles were to be fought; and when their brothers began to lose
heart in the fray, they would descend from the clouds and give to
each warrior the heart of the lion, and the arm of the jaguar.

His heart swelled with a wild war-fever as these thoughts passed
through his brain. Then the darkness began to creep over the plains;
it came softly and as remorselessly as the prairie panther; and a
fear grew upon the savage. The horsemen in the sky had come nearer to
the earth; some of them had trooped across through the dusk, till
they stood directly above his head; and he fancied that several of
the figures had lowered themselves down till they almost touched him.