When he returned he croaked out, with an unusual air of excitement, "Big thing!"
"What is a pig ding?" inquired Sergeant Meyer.
"Never see Injuns make such a fight afore."
"Nor I," assented Meyer.
"Stranger, they fowt first-rate," affirmed Smith, half admiring the Apaches. "How many did we save?"
"Here are vour in our room, und the leftenant says there are three on the roof, und berhabs we killed vour or vive outside."
"A dozen!" chuckled Texas, "besides the wounded. Let's hev a look at the dead uns."
Going into Meyer's room, he found one of the Apaches still twitching, and immediately cut his throat. Then he climbed to the roof, gloated over the three bodies there, dragged them one by one to the ledge, and pitched them into the plaza.
"That'll settle 'em," he remarked with a sigh of intense satisfaction, like that of a baby when it has broken its rattle. Coming down again, he looked all the corpses over again, and said with an air of disappointment which was almost sentimental, "On'y a dozen!"
"I kin keer for the Injuns," he volunteered when the question came up of burying the dead. "I'd rather keer for 'em than not."