mama! Papa is coming!"

Tommy Briscoe, brimming over with excitement, ran, shouting, across the yard and darted into the kitchen, leaving a half emptied pail of milk standing on the ground before the stable, where a small red calf he had been feeding promptly upset it. In a moment he reappeared in the doorway, his mother and little sister Annie behind him. Mrs. Briscoe, a woman still evidently under middle age but whose sweet, serious face showed plainly the lines which the patient endurance of hardships draw upon the faces of most frontier women, looked down the faintly marked road running away to the southward, surprise and perplexity in her eyes. Along the road and still some distance away, a horseman was galloping toward them furiously. The road led only to the Briscoe cabin, which was distant a number of miles from its nearest neighbors. The rider could hardly be any other than Mr. Briscoe; moreover, even at that distance his wife could recognize the color and the short, jerking gallop of the horse he was riding.

"It is certainly Chick," she said, half to herself and half to the children. "But what can bring Tom home so soon? He did not expect to be back before four or five o'clock and now it is hardly past noon. He must have left Fort Ridgely almost as soon as he reached there. I hope nothing is wrong."

"I hope he got the calico for my dolly's dress," exclaimed Annie, dancing up and down in anticipation of the gift her father had promised to bring her when he rode away in the morning.

"And I hope he got my coyote trap," added Tommy. "The coyotes will carry off all our chickens, first thing we know."

He raised the short bow he was carrying and sent a little iron-tipped arrow whizzing accurately into a tree-trunk fifty feet away. He had been going out to the meadow in a few minutes, and he never went anywhere without his bow and arrows, for he was sufficiently expert with them to bring down now and then a squirrel or a quail and sometimes even a prairie chicken.

The two children, unconscious of any cause for uneasiness in their father's early return, followed Mrs. Briscoe as she stepped from the door and walked a few paces down the road to meet the approaching rider, who came on without slacking pace until he drew up beside them. His horse, a small animal, was dripping with sweat and trembling with exertion, for it was a hot August day and his rider was a large man. Mr. Briscoe, for he it was, stepped down from the saddle rather stiffly. His face was very grave as he kissed his wife and children.

"Did you get my coyote trap, papa?" cried the little boy, almost before his father's foot had touched the ground.

"Did you bring my calico, papa?" chimed in Annie.

"No, my dears, I hadn't time. You had better run away a minute." He glanced at his wife significantly.

"Oh, I'm sorry!" exclaimed Tommy. "But let me unsaddle Chick." He caught the stirrup leather and swung himself nimbly into the saddle.

"Go and finish feeding the calf, Annie," said Mrs. Briscoe.

The little girl, with disappointed face, walked obediently toward the stable, into which Tommy had already ridden.

"What has happened, Thomas?" exclaimed Mrs. Briscoe, her voice quivering with anxiety, as soon as the children were beyond hearing.

Her husband laid his strong hand reassuringly on her arm.

"Don't be frightened, Mary," he said, "we shall doubtless get out of it all right, but we must hurry. The Indians broke out at the Lower Agency this morning; you know they have been becoming more and more restless for a good while past. When I reached Fort Ridgely, about eleven, Captain Marsh had already started for the Agency with about fifty men. He may have the disturbance crushed by this time. I saw Lieutenant Geer, who is left in command with forty men. Lieutenant Sheehan marched for Fort Ripley yesterday with fifty men. Geer would have sent an escort with me while I came for you but of course he could not spare a man from the handful he has. I think it would not be really dangerous to stay here, but to be on the safe side and not expose you and the children to any risk we had perhaps better pack what we can on the wagon and go to the fort for a few days till the trouble blows over. Where is Al?"

Mr. Briscoe was slapping the dust from his coat and hat as he talked. He tried to speak in as reassuring terms and as confident a tone as possible, but his wife intuitively knew that he was not telling her all that was in his mind.

"Al just went up to the meadow to turn the wind-rows," she said. "Tommy was going to help him as soon as he finished feeding the calf. Shall he go for Al?"

"Yes."

Mrs. Briscoe called to the boy, who dashed away toward the meadow, which lay only a short distance north, beyond a thicket of bushes and small trees. Then she turned to her husband, who was walking into the stable.

"You have had no dinner, Tom," she said.

"No, but I want none."

"Were any white people killed at the Agency?" she asked, as Mr. Briscoe came out with a halter and started toward the pasture lot where their other horse was grazing. He seemed to want to avoid questions, but he answered:

"They say there were."

"Many?"

Her husband paused. He was not accustomed to conceal things from his wife.

"Why," he replied, hesitatingly, "it is reported that all of them were killed; but that is probably exaggerated, and very likely it will prove there were none."

Mrs. Briscoe's face paled a little but she retained her composure. She asked no more questions, for now she knew all that was necessary for the present of the gravity of the situation. Moreover, she had supreme confidence in her husband's judgment. He started again toward the pasture, saying, as he glanced toward the lumber wagon standing near the kitchen door:

"You had better begin putting things in the wagon, Mary. You know what to take; only the most necessary and valuable things, for we shall doubtless be back in a few days."

Indeed, Mrs. Briscoe knew well by hard experience what to take. Once before during the brief year they had spent in the wild valley of the Minnesota River, they had fled to Fort Ridgely, about twenty miles south of their claim, at the alarm of an Indian uprising, which, however, in that instance had fortunately proved false. That was in the Spring of 1862; it was now August of the same year. When they moved into the country during the previous August, bringing the few possessions which remained to them from the wreck of their fortunes in Missouri, their nearest neighbor lived fourteen miles away. Now there were three pioneer families within a radius of ten miles of them, and, in comparison with the earlier isolation of their new home, they felt that the country was becoming quite densely peopled. But away to the southwest and west of them, not more than twenty-five miles distant, swarmed a host of neighbors whose presence there always oppressed their imaginations like the sight of a low, black bank of thunder clouds when they looked toward that quarter of the horizon. For southwest, at Red Wood Falls, was the Lower Agency, the assembling place of the M'dewakanton and the Wakpekute Indians, and west was the Upper Agency, on the Yellow Medicine River, where lived or congregated several thousand Sissetons and Wahpetons. Still further west and extending away to Big Stone Lake, nearly one hundred miles distant, were some other agencies and missions, where greater or less bodies of Indians of the above tribes made their headquarters. The Sissetons and Wahpetons on the Yellow Medicine were not greatly to be