CHAPTER XXV 



WE PART FROM FRIENDS 



^ I ^HE captain's party returned from To haus- 

 -■- en's village about sunset. He said that he 

 had had an amicable and satisfactory talk with 

 the old chief and his followers, all of whom reit- 

 erated their former professions of friendship for 

 the whites and declared that they would have 

 no intercourse with the hostiles. 



"We've got to take that," said Wild Bill, who 

 had been interpreter at the talk, "with a grain of 

 salt, for while I was there I found out, by pumping 

 some of their youngsters and women, that they 

 were pretty well posted about the whole affair up 

 to the time that Lieutenant Wilson put in an ap- 

 pearance and stampeded them this morning, which 

 goes to show that a few of To hausen's bucks 

 were with Satank up to that time; and in the 

 stampede these fellows must have skedaddled back 

 to To hausen's camp and told about the fight 

 as far as they had been in it. But they didn't 

 seem to know about our part of the fight up the 

 creek nor about old Broken Nose and this other 

 Indian getting their medicine here. I told them 

 about that part of it. And, to make it appear hke 



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