“Bless your soul, my younker, that ere Lone Wolf that they call such a great chief (and I may as well own up and say that he is), is heavy on ransoms and he ain’t the only chief that’s in that line. That skunk runs off with men, women and boys, and his rule is not to give ’em up ag’in till he gits a good round price. He calculated on making a good thing off you, and I rather think he would.”
“Does he always give up those, then, that their friends want to ransom?”
“Not by any means; it’s altogether as the notion takes him. He sports more skulps and topknots than any of his brother-chiefs, and he never lets his stock run low. As them other varmints creep up onto him, he shoots ahead by scooping in more topknots, and thar’s no use of thar trying to butt ag’in him. He’s ’way ahead of ’em, and there he’s bound to stay, and they can’t help it.”
“Then he might have used me the same way, after all the pains he took to get me.”
“Jest as like as not. He is as ugly as the devil himself. Two years ago he stole a good-looking gal up near Santa Fe. He had a chance for the biggest kind of ransom; but the poor gal had long, golden hair, and the skunk wanted it for an ornament, and he took it, too, and thinks more of it than any out of his hundred and more. Arter getting yer home among his people, and arter he’d found out thar’s a good show fur a big ransom from yer father, jest as like as not he’d make up his mind that the best thing he could do would be to knock ye on ther head and raise yer ha’r, and he’d do it, too.”
“Well, thank heaven, none of us are in his hands now, and I pray that he may never get us.”
The three were still standing as close to the edge of the ravine as was prudent, so that the moonlight fell about them. They were enabled to see quite a long distance up and down the pass, the uncertain light, however, causing objects to assume a fantastic contour, which would have made an inexperienced person uncertain whether he was looking down upon animate or inanimate objects. They were on the point of moving away, when Fred Munson exclaimed, with some excitement:
“The country seems to be full of camp-fires or signal-fires. Yonder is one just started!”
He pointed up the ravine, and to the other side, where an unusually bright star seemed to be rising over the solitude beyond. It was about a quarter of a mile away, and its brightness such as to show its nature.
“Yes, that’s one of ’em,” said the scout, in a tone which showed that he had no particular interest in it.