The Broncho Rider Boys were deeply interested in everything, and Billie used his little kodak freely, in snapping off pictures that appealed to him as worth preserving.
Like all other tribes of Indians, the Zunis have a test through which their boys have to go before they can be called real braves, and be looked upon as full fledged warriors, capable of taking arms, and doing the fighting for the tribe; though it has been a long time, doubtless, since the Zunis have gone upon the warpath, because their old-time enemies, the Apaches, have been on a reservation for many years.
Still, that must not interfere in any degree from the making of warriors; and as might be expected, the ability to stoically endure terrible bodily pain is the main feature of these tests.
There were half a dozen applicants, being young boys who aspired to assume the privileges of the warrior class, perhaps select a future wife, and settle down to having homes of their own, up among those tiers of rock houses.
They showed what they could do in all manner of contests, and after winning the admiration of all observers, these young lads submitted themselves to the committee, headed by the old medicine man, and which had a programme laid out that caused some of the paleface observers to shudder, and turn away.
Those dusky sons of the desert allowed their judges to pass splinters of tough wood through certain muscles of their arms and shoulders, and not one of them by so much as a single groan manifested any interest in the matter. A stolid look on their faces told that they had steeled themselves to endure anything, rather than be disgraced by a cry of anguish.
They were then hung up from the supports erected for this especial purpose, the ropes being actually secured to the wooden splinters that had been passed through their flesh.
It made even Donald shudder when one of the
judges, at an order from the awful-looking medicine man, actually started to turn the victims around; for the agony must have been terrible indeed.
One of the wretched candidates actually fainted dead away, and hung there in that condition; but there was not a groan, not even a sigh, or a look of pain on any of their faces.