“Did they see you?”
“They did.”
“Why didn’t they turn upon you? You said there were twenty of them.”
“Why?” repeated the Pike man boastfully. “They were afraid. They recognized me as the Rip-tail Roarer. They knew that I had sent more than fifty Indians to the happy hunting-grounds, and alone as I was they fled.”
“Sho!”
“Did you kill any of them?” asked Joe.
“When I was some distance on my way I found I had left my revolver behind. Did you find it, stranger?”
“There it is,” said Joshua, who had replaced it on the ground close to where the Pike man had slept.
He took it with satisfaction and replaced it in his girdle.
“Then you didn’t kill any?”