His wife did not
know till three days after he had gone what the nature of his mission
was.
IV
Jim made his journey in good weather with his faithful dogs alone, and
came into the camp of the Crees armed with only a revolver. If he had
gone with ten men, there would have been an instant melee, in which he
would have lost his life. This is what the chief had expected, had
prepared for; but Jim was more formidable alone, with power far behind
him which could come with force and destroy the tribe, if resistance was
offered, than with fifty men. His tongue had a gift of terse and
picturesque speech, powerful with a people who had the gift of
imagination. With five hundred men ready to turn him loose in the plains
without dogs or food, he carried himself with a watchful coolness and
complacent determination which got home to their minds with great force.
For hours the struggle for the murderer went on, a struggle of mind over
inferior mind and matter. Arrowhead was a chief whose will had never been
crossed by his own people, and to master that will by a superior will, to
hold back the destructive force which, to the ignorant minds of the
braves, was only a natural force of defence, meant a task needing more
than authority behind it.
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