“Well, do tell us what you heard. Hurry up.”
“Softly, softly, my young sir; everything in order. I can’t tell you what I heard, because you must first know how I heard it. When I went out in the rain from here I went back to where we were camping when the two Apaches came to us, and had to hide at once, for there were three redskins sniffing around. Apache spies, says I to myself; and so they were. They surveyed the premises without coming on my trail, and sat down under the trees where it was dry to wait for their chiefs, and I had to wait, too, two long hours. At last came a mounted band, led by Intschu-Tschuna and Winnetou.”
“How many were there?”
“Just as I expected, about fifty men. The spies went out to meet them, and after a few words with their chiefs went on ahead, the braves following slowly. You may imagine, gentlemen, that Sam Hawkins followed after them. The rain had washed out ordinary tracks, but the broad trail of your camp was plain; I wish I might always have a trail as easy to follow. But the Indians wanted to be very sure, for they peered into every nook and corner and behind every bush, and made such slow progress that darkness came on after we had gone only about two miles, and they dismounted and made their camp.”
“And did you creep up to them there?”
“Yes; like wise fellows they made no fire, but Sam Hawkins, being equally wise, thought that served him as well as them. So I crawled under the trees, and wriggled forward on my stomach till I got near enough to hear what they were saying. Their words were brief but to the point. It is as we expected: they want to capture us alive.”
“And not kill us?”
“Not all at once. They want to take us to the Mascaleros village at Rio Pecos, where we are to be tortured and die a living death, like carp taken out of the water and put into a pond to fatten. I wonder what kind of flesh old Sam’s would make, especially if they put me into the pan in my leather hunting-jacket.”
He laughed in his silent, inward fashion, and added: “They’ve got their eye on Mr. Rattler there, sitting as still as if heaven, with all the saints, were waiting for him. Yes, Rattler, they’ve got a banquet ready for you that I wouldn’t care to sit down to. You’re to be spitted, impaled, poisoned, smothered, shot, broken on a wheel, and hanged, each done a little more beautifully than the other, and only a taste of each that you may be kept alive a long time and have the full benefit of all the torture and anguish of death. And if after all you shouldn’t be quite dead, you’re to be laid in the grave of Kleki-Petrah, whom you murdered, and buried alive.”
“Merciful Heaven! did they say that?” gasped Rattler, his face blanched with terror.