"Got him, Bill!" remarked Ridge.
"I should smile not to capture such a tenderfoot," was the rejoinder, as he flung his human prize upon the cavern floor.
[CHAPTER IV.]
THE MAN WHO RAN RIGHT INTO TROUBLE.
The prisoner of the Cherokee half-breed was in a forlorn state, more particularly as regarded apparel. Hardly suited for mountaineering at their best, his clothes were sorry rags, which an attempt at mending with bark fibre and rawhide had even rendered more lamentable. A horsehair lasso, of remarkable fineness and strength, was wound round and round him with a care which a Chinese would have envied. A handful of moss was the gag which nearly choked him, but his eyes were more full of rage than supplication, and they seemed to burn with enhanced indignation when he found the Indian was in concert with a white hunter.
Young Bill Williams flung his captive down on some dry rushes, and, laying aside his gun and the stranger's, which was broken, he sat down at the fire.
"It was a coyote," he remarked, scornfully. "But the Cherokee did not give him even time to yelp."
"Ah!" said Ridge, "I wonder you did not shoot him thar. Thar will always be plenty of that game on the prairie for the greenhorn hunter, I opine. It is all very well our discovering this country, but we don't want any raw Eastern fellows, with Boston dressing, discovering us!" Bill made no comment. He had pulled the soused bears' paws over to him, poured out some coffee—from which the full aroma was extracted by a sudden chill at the height of its boiling with cold water—and was thus beginning his meal.