"What did you say to them?" Dorran demanded of Long Ears.
The captain was quiet a moment. "She asked if we were going to enter the lodge of a woman of the Newly Made Lodge clan, our relative, against her will, to drag out her wounded brother for a white man," he said. "She asked if that is what we put on these coats for."
"And?"
"And I am thinking about it," said Long Ears.
For a long moment nobody spoke. The wind lifted a skein of snow off the top of a lodge and let it fall. Tasker's hand drifted toward the butt of his revolver and then, seeing fifty men watching it, drifted away again.
At last Dorran unfolded his hands.
"Issue day is twelve days from now," he said pleasantly. "Mister Pike's herd will be at the agency corral on the fifteenth. I shall expect this band to draw its ration as usual, if it wishes to eat this winter. And I shall have soldiers present, Strikes Twice. I have already written to the commanding officer at Fort Custer. I've told him exactly what kind of people you've been harboring, and how they've threatened my staff, and what sort of lodge your daughter keeps." He gathered his reins. "I suspect he'll want to see for himself."
He turned his horse. Tasker lingered a moment longer, looking at Wes with flat, pale eyes, and then turned to follow, and the Crow police went after them in a straggling line down the creek.
All but one. Long Ears sat his horse a moment beside the lodge of Strikes Twice, his face still unreadable. Then he leaned down and spoke briefly to the chief, and touched his hat to Rides Far, and rode after the others.
"What did he say?" Wes asked.
Rides Far's face had gone very still.