"Next time you leave camp at night tell us where you're going," said Jack with a hard smile.
It did not feaze Jean Paul. "Mus' I tell w'en I go to see a girl?" he demanded, highly injured.
Jack laughed. "Very clever! But the girl was Etzeeah, and I know all you said."
Jean Paul fell suddenly silent.
"Kneel down," commanded Jack. "Tie his ankles together, Davy, with his wrists between."
Jack finished the job himself, going over all the knots, and taking half a dozen turns around Jean Paul's body, with a final knot on his chest, out of reach of both hands and teeth. He and Davy then picked him up and laid him inside his own tent. His pipe dropped out of his mouth in transit. Jack, with grim good-nature, picked it up and thrust it between his teeth again. Jean Paul puffed at it defiantly. Jack fastened the tent flaps back, affording a clear view of the interior.
"I'll have to leave him to you while we're gone, Davy. Keep away from him. Don't listen to anything he says. Above all, don't touch him. I don't see how he can work loose, but if he should"—Jack raised his voice so it would carry into the tent—"shoot him like a coyote. I order you to do it. I take the consequences."
Jean Paul lay without stirring. His face was hidden.
"God knows what poisonous mess is stewing inside his skull," Jack said to Mary, as they rode away.
When the two of them cantered into the quadrangle of the tepees, with its uproar of screaming children, yelping curs, and loose horses, it needed no second glance to confirm the report that the redskins were in an ugly temper. An angry murmur went hissing down the line like the sputtering of a fuse. Every one dropped what he was doing; heads stuck out of all the tepee openings; the little children scuttled inside. Men scowled and fingered their guns; women laughed derisively, and spat on the ground.