The Indians were keen to get at us, but the old
Chief had his men in hand all right.
"'Don't think you will not get justice,' said the Superintendent. 'You
come yourself and see. Here's a pass for you on the railroad and for
any three of your men. But let me warn you that if one hair of my men is
touched, it will be a bad day for you, Crowfoot, and for your band.'
"He bundled his man into the buckboard and sent him off. The
Superintendent and I waited on horseback in parley with old Crowfoot
till the buckboard was over the hill. Such a half hour I never expect to
see again. I felt like a man standing over an open keg of gunpowder with
a lighted match. Any moment a spark might fall, and then good-bye. And
it is this same nerve of his that holds down these camps along this
line. Here we are with twenty-five men from Laggan to Beaver keeping
order among twenty-five hundred railroad navvies, not a bad lot, and
twenty-five hundred others, the scum, the very devil's scum from across
the line, and not a murder all these months. Whiskey, of course, but all
under cover. I tell you, he's put the fear of death on all that tinhorn
bunch that hang around these camps."
"There doesn't seem to be much trouble just now," remarked Cameron.
"Trouble? There may be the biggest kind of trouble any day.
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