With Sully into the Sioux Land

ng, mama! Pap

rs. Briscoe, a woman still evidently under middle age but whose sweet, serious face showed plainly the lines which the patient endurance of hardships draw upon the faces of most frontier women, looked down the faintly marked road running away to the southward, surprise and perplexity in her eyes. Along the road and still some distance

om home so soon? He did not expect to be back before four or five o'clock and now it is hardly pas

nie, dancing up and down in anticipation of the gift her fath

ded Tommy. "The coyotes will carry off

et away. He had been going out to the meadow in a few minutes, and he never went anywhere without his bow and arrows, for

meet the approaching rider, who came on without slacking pace until he drew up beside them. His horse, a small animal, was dripping with sweat and trembling with exertion, for it wa

ried the little boy, almost before hi

y calico, papa?"

had better run away a minute." He

e unsaddle Chick." He caught the stirrup lea

ing the calf, Annie

e, walked obediently toward the stable

Briscoe, her voice quivering with anxiety,

s strong hand reass

y started for the Agency with about fifty men. He may have the disturbance crushed by this time. I saw Lieutenant Geer, who is left in command with forty men. Lieutenant Sheehan marched for Fort Ripley yesterday with fifty men. Geer would have sent an escort with me while I came for you but of course he

d to speak in as reassuring terms and as confident a tone as possible, but hi

s," she said. "Tommy was going to help him as soon

es

h lay only a short distance north, beyond a thicket of bushes and small

no dinner, T

t I wan

ame out with a halter and started toward the pasture lot where their othe

ay ther

an

as not accustomed to con

all of them were killed; but that is probably exagge

was necessary for the present of the gravity of the situation. Moreover, she had supreme confidence in her husband's jud

You know what to take; only the most necessary and valuab

in comparison with the earlier isolation of their new home, they felt that the country was becoming quite densely peopled. But away to the southwest and west of them, not more than twenty-five miles distant, swarmed a host of neighbors whose presence there always oppressed their imaginations like the sight of a low, black bank of thunder clouds when they looked toward that quarter of the horizon. For southwest, at Red Wood Falls, was the Lower Agency, the assembling place of the M'dewakanton and the Wakpekute Indians, and west was the Upper Agency, on the Yellow Medicine River, where lived or congregated several thousand Sissetons and Wahpetons. Still further west and extendin

ewly erected Territory of Dakota, living the wild, free life of their ancestors and coming to the Agency only when one of the annual payments was due them for the lands in Minnesota which they had sold to the Government several years before. At

about to be overthrown, which, indeed, did not seem improbable in 1862 in view of the many reverses which the Union armies were suffering. Such reports, coupled with the fact that most of the United States troops along the Minnesota frontier had been sent to the South and that those remaining were few and scattered, caused the leaders of the hostile element among the Minnesota Indians to believe that the time had come when the whites might be driven back beyond the Mississippi, leaving the Indians again in possession of all their old territories west of that stream. At the time the Briscoe family had come i

hered there, waiting with increasing impatience for the arrival of the annuity, and in a mood to listen eagerly to any suggestions of massacre and pillage which might be poured into their ears by Inkpaduta and his villainous companions. But what he did not know until he rode into Fort Ridgely on that terrible morning of August 18, 1862, was that on the previous day a wandering party of young M'dewakanton braves had murdered three white men and two white women near the hamlet of Acton, forty miles north of Fort Ridgely and about twenty from his own claim; that the young assassins had then ridden post-haste to the Lower Agency and with their news of bloodshed, wh

being a brave man and one who had served his country with honor and courage during the Mexican War, he faced the situation with coolness and at the sam

small box containing a few pieces of handsome silver ware, some of recent pattern but most of it old, into which she looked carefully before depositing it in one of the trunks. Two small oil paintings in frames she packed carefully, and when these had been disposed of in the trunks little remained in the slenderly furnished house except its rude furniture, largely homemade, the bedding and the pots and pans and crockery dishes i

her?" he exclaimed. "Wh

me back from the fort, A

mot

e, this afternoon. The Indians have broken out at the Lower Agency and

hat's bad, isn't it? What

n back and his eyes flashing. "Why should we run away from a

pride at the fearless little fellow, so like his father. "Th

ld block up the doors and windows, and t

g the small boy's shoulder, "but they could

or the

d. No, no! Mother, are the tru

Tommy can take out the mattresses and pillows. The fort will

ent Mr. Bri

in his usual tone, as if no

le Tommy ran to Mr. Briscoe for a

ck beneath it. The musket was loaded, but he took off the old percussion cap and replaced it with a new one. He loaded the shotgun from a powder horn and shot flask on the shelf and then carefully examined a large, six-shot, 44-calibre Starr revolver, also already loaded, of

y, turn Spot out in the pasture with the calf. She can get water from the creek, and there is plenty of grass for her. It is a good thing that calf isn't entirely weane

runk in the wagon and were alone

tarted to sweep the whole country clean. Some of them may come here at any moment. My boy-" He laid his hand on Al's shoulder and his voice became very earnest. He spoke almost as if he felt a premonition of coming events. "My boy, I know I can trust you; you are almost a man in judgment and understanding. If we should encounter Indians before we reach the fort

father was speaking but he returned the latter's ga

of course I shall remember what you say and always

et us load that trunk and bo

by patches of dark, cool woodland where the trees stood clustered on a slope or marked the winding course of some ravine or sluggish creek. From the Briscoe cabin could be caught glimpses between the trees north of it of the hay-cocks on the sun-flooded meadow, where Al and Tommy had been working. It was a tract of native prairie grass and a small one, for Mr. Briscoe had mowed it with a scythe. No sound broke the stillness of the early aft

on turned in sudden apprehension and saw six Indians, one after another, issue from the woods and ride toward them. They were mounted on ponies and were naked except for breech-clouts, wh

just inside the kitchen door. Tell your mother if she hears a shot to run with the children from the bedroom door and hide in

he house. He had bethought himself of the eggs and was in th

n in silence until they reached the door, each holding with one hand a rifle or musket laid across th

iscoe, smiling and

ile their leader, a fellow of lighter hue than the rest, evidently a half-breed, sprang t

ant f

" replied Mr. Brisc

e door but the half-

said, jerking his head towa

they would have the family at their mercy. He stepped inside the door an

eed you. But not if y

ly understood that it meant trouble. With the sudden authority of a man in

! Keep out of sight; hide in the

time than it takes to tell it; but the half-breed, cursing frightfully as he

ot h

et beside the door, was quicker than the savage. His shot rang out and the Indian pitched headlong to the groun

to his breast. He wheeled, staggered a step or two into

aw three of the four remaining Indians galloping furiously away toward the meadow; he saw Tommy, half way between the barn and house, running toward the latter, and he saw the fourth Indian, leaning far over from his pony's side, swooping down upon the boy. The warrior looked back toward the house and in that instant's glimpse Al noted that he was a huge fellow, over six feet tall and that along his left cheek, d

d disappeared in the strip of woods and then Al remembered his mother and sister. He abandoned his futile pursuit and ran to the house, not even glancing at the dead Indian in the yard nor the one before the door. Rushing into the kitchen, he threw himself in a paroxysm of grief beside his father's body, crying out to him and vainly striving to discover a sign of life in the quiet face, already grown so peaceful under the soothing to