He always rode astride a sturdy little buckskin-colored cayuse.
Like most Indian boys, he was a splendid horseman, steady in his seat,
swift of eye, and sure of every prairie trail in all Saskatchewan. He
always wore a strange mixture of civilized and savage clothes--fringed
buckskin "chaps," beaded moccasins, a blue flannel shirt, a scarlet silk
handkerchief knotted around his throat, a wide-brimmed cowboy hat with a
rattlesnake skin as a hatband, and two magnificent bracelets of ivory
elks' teeth. His braided hair, his young, clean, thin, dark face, his
fearless riding, began to be known far and wide. The men of the Hudson's
Bay Company trusted him. The North-West Mounted Police loved him. The
white traders admired him. But, most of all, he stood fast in the
affection of his own Indian people. They never forgot the fact that, had
he wished, he could have stayed with the white people altogether, that
he was equal to them in English education, but he did not choose to do
so--he was one of their own for all time.
But one dreadful night Corporal Manan of the North-West Mounted Police
rode into barracks at Regina with a serious, worried face.
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