The white man swore a fierce oath, threw his left arm in front of his face, and laid the barrel of his six-shooter across.
Just as he was about to shoot, he suddenly changed his mind.
“I won’t do it,” he growled; “that would make it too easy fer you. Hang there, ye measly Piute! Hang there until yer arms pull out o’ their sockets, and ye starve an’ die. That’ll teach ye to butt inter a game of Bascomb’s, I reckon. Hi, there, you!” he shouted, lifting his gaze to the Apaches on top of the cliff. “I’m goin’ to Squaw Rock to wait for Hendricks, but you’re to go back along the rim of the gulch and pick off Buffalo Bill and his pards if they come this way follerin’ the Piute. Come ter Squaw Rock an’ report ter me if anythin’ happens. Scatter, now, the five o’ ye, an’ see that ye carry out orders. If you don’t, look out for Bascomb!”
In addressing the Apaches now the white man was not using Spanish or the hand-talk; some among them, presumably, understood English sufficiently to catch his meaning.
Leaping to the back of their ponies, the Indians rode away.
The white man, springing to the path that led to the top of the wall of the defile, mounted it swiftly.
In a few minutes Little Cayuse’s captors were all gone, and Little Cayuse was left swinging helplessly against the bare cliff wall.
The pull on his arms was frightful. The rope seemed to be tearing them out of his body.
But he had said no word about Pa-e-has-ka’s orders, and he was glad. He had faced death, and was then facing it, because he had been true to Pa-e-has-ka.
What if the rope did pull at his arms and torture him? Was Little Cayuse a squaw that he should whimper and cry with the torture?