Fox’s raised eyebrow caused her to stop before she said anything else. “Under most circumstances you would be correct. But my people, my little tribe, have been studying you whites for some time, working for you and among you. The Pawnee have been Scouts for the Union Army for many years now, partly because the Union Army fought the Cheyenne, the Arapaho and the Sioux, who were our enemies. Our reservation lands are poor. We have observed that time and time again, when something that a white man wants is found on our reservation lands, we are pushed to poorer lands yet. The only thing that the white man respects is a deed of land bought with money.” Leading Fox shrugged, slightly. “So, now in Cody we have a white friend who will buy land for us, and my tribe, at least, will never be pushed out again. If a white man tries to take it from us, we will go to the white man’s court, and show our paper, and he will go away unsatisfied. We may not have the breadth of land that we once were able to roam across freely, but we will have good land, land we can farm, land that will feed us. We will have to give over hunting the buffalo in favor of keeping cattle, yet that is a small price to pay for being free. But for that—”

“You need money!” she exclaimed.

“Even so,” he replied, with a nod. “In the Scouts, we learned to fight with the white man’s weapons. So we shall do so again, and the weapon is money. My tribe, at least. Perhaps, in time, we will seem to vanish into the white man’s landscape, as we vanished into our own, and he will take no heed of us, and we will go about our living in peace.”

It seemed horribly unfair that Leading Fox and his people were being forced to work so far from home in order to buy back what should have been theirs by right. But as Giselle was sadly aware, there were many, many things that were horribly unfair. At least Fox and his tribe had a plan, and as far as she could tell, it was one that had a good chance of success, as long as they could all make this show prosper.