Trouble's Messenger
A Western Story by Max Brand

When Peter Messenger appeared at Louis Desparr's trading post, he was a man of mystery. It was easy to pick out this stranger. Where all the others, Blackfeet and white hunters, are in motion, Messenger stands fast at the corner of the storehouse, with his arms folded. He is a white man with blond hair, but unlike the other white men who have lived so long among the Indians and are so much like them even to their bronzed skin, he appears only flushed, not stained by the sun. Yet, although he may appear a tenderfoot, Messenger is more than a match for Dust-In-The-Sky when that brave challenges him to a fight. Henry Lessing, an experienced frontiersman, befriends Messenger and warns him that now other Blackfeet will be laying for him. They almost succeed in a nocturnal ambush before they are interrupted by the excitement caused by the arrival at the trading post of War Lance, the most illustrious warrior in the Blackfoot nation, and, accompanying him, Summer Day, a medicine man and Blackfoot chief.