At the frontier town of St. Paul, the excitement was as great as at Fort Snelling. Everybody talked war, while at the river front two dozen boats were hastily loading and unloading. Mixed with the excited white people were a number of silent, stolid-looking Indians, both Chippewa and Sioux. They were found in the stores, on the streets and at the boat landing.
The town seemed full of soldiers from all parts of the State. Some of the men of the _Fanny Harris_ had deserted the boat at Fort Snelling, because they were afraid if they waited they might not be able to get in on the 75,000 President Lincoln had called for.
On the first up-river boat, the two lads and their friends started back for Fort Ridgely. They were all in a sad mood. Bill could not help thinking of the words of the officer, in regard to Vicksburg, while Barker and Black Buffalo were turning over in their minds the looks and the talk of the Sioux, who in the red glare of torches and bonfires, had been watching the loading of cannons and other preparations for the departure of the soldiers.
Black Buffalo especially seemed in a sullen mood.
“Who is the white boys’ cousin?” he asked Barker, when the two were sitting alone on the rear deck after dinner, while the boys were watching immense flocks of geese, ducks, and cormorants that were now going north over the flooded valley.
“He pretends to be their friend,” replied the trapper, “but I am, like yourself, much puzzled by his actions and behavior. He does nothing for the boys. He talks of finding a good squatter’s homestead for them, but even Bill is much too young to hold a piece of land till it is surveyed and opened for settlement.”
“He is not their friend,” Black Buffalo uttered gruffly. “I see him often talking with bad Indians and bad white men. I do not like him; he is a bad man. He sells rum to the Indians, when he thinks no eyes see him, and he talks against the good work of the missionaries.
“We should keep our eyes on him. He means to do some harm to the boys.”
“What harm could he do to them?” Barker asked, trying to conceal his own fears and the anxiety he had often felt about the relation of the two boys to their supposed cousin.
“We must watch him,” he said to Black Buffalo; “there is something strange about him. He can talk well, but his eye is unsteady.”