Moreover, his dauntless front and contemptuous answer had had its effect on the Indians. "The young chief must be sure the soldiers are coming," reasoned the elders, so before taking the fateful plunge it were wise to take a look. Young warriors dashed away northeastward over the rolling divides, and others galloped after to intermediate bluffs and ridges, but it was well-nigh an hour before the signals came whirling back. "No soldiers, no danger," and even then they temporized. In trailing war bonnet, his gleaming body bare to the waist, his feathered head held high, his nimble pony bedizened with tinsel and finery, a white "fool flag" waving at the tip of his lance, with two young braves in attendance, each with his little symbol of truce, Black Wolf came riding gallantly down from the distant southward bluffs, demanding further parley. Black Wolf had tidings worth the telling, he said. He had stood the white man's friend and endeavored to prevent hostilities, but since the affair of the previous night all that was hopeless, and now he must stand by his people. His young men, he shouted, at dawn had attacked the guard at the wood camp, and the scalps of every man, still warm and bloody, hung at the belts of his braves, even now galloping back to swell the ranks of their brothers. He urged the young white chief to make no such error as had the sub-chief, the sergeant, at the camp, who had fired upon his warriors when offered mercy. There was still time for the young chief to consider. He was surrounded, cut off from help and home. His brethren dare not quit the shelter of the fort to come to aid him. They would be annihilated on the open prairie, as was the "Long Hair" at the Little Horn a generation ago. This, then, should be the young chief's warning and his opportunity. Let him and his men, save one, depart in peace, leaving everything and everybody else as they were before the young chief came. Black Wolf would await the reply. In resonant periods, in ringing, sonorous tones, the speech of the orator-chief had been delivered, his deep, powerful voice fairly thundering over the valley, and echoing back from the crags of Warrior Bluff, a mile away to the west. A spirited, barbaric group it made, that magnificent savage with his bright-hued escort all gleaming in the slanting sunshine, full two hundred yards away. On every little eminence, on every side, were grouped listening bands of his braves. One could almost hear their guttural "Ughs" of approval. One could almost count their swarming array. Farther to the south, along the jagged line of the barricade ridge, score upon score of blanketed squaws and bareheaded children huddled in shrill, chattering groups, too distant to hear or to be heard, but readily seen to be wild with excitement. Out in front of the grimly closed and silent agency, with only the half-breed interpreter at his side, but in humorous recognition of the solemn state of the Indian embassy, with two sergeants in close attendance, Ray stood listening, and turned for explanation to the official go-between, impatiently heard him half through, then flung out his hand, palm foremost, in half circular sweep to the front and right--the old signal. "Be off," it said as plain as did the later words of the assistant. "Tell him to go where I told him before," said Ray. "If he wants the agent, or my soldiers, or my guns, or me, let him come and take them," winding up as he faced his antagonist, with the swift, significant gesture that the Sioux know so well: "Brave, that ends it!" and turned abruptly away.