"Never knew any but grizzlies to breed about here," explained Kiddie, moving the loose door along its grooves. "And I presume Rube caught it himself. Yes," he continued, "this is where the fellow got out. What perplexes me, however, is why Rube thought it necessary to have a second door at all."
"Padlock was too high for him to reach," returned Gideon, "an' Rube didn't notion t' have truck with keyholes, winter nights, when he c'd shove the cub's grub in by a trap he c'd slide open in the dark."
"Well, there's no great harm done, anyway," smiled Kiddie. "Your mare and the corral ponies are safe; none of your men are wounded. As for Broken Feather—we couldn't have kept him a prisoner, you know. We have no warrant for his arrest."
"Isa Blagg, the sheriff, is here, right now," Gideon told him. "Isa c'd have arrested him, legal, I guess."
"Even so," resumed Kiddie, "you would soon have had another raid. The Redskins would have been here like a shot to liberate their chief and to retaliate on you for having foiled them in One Tree Gulch."
"Sure," acknowledged the Old Man, leading the way to the stable. "An' even as matters stand, I'm figurin' as Broken Feather 'll notion ter have revenge on you fer puttin' the lasso on him. He'll try ter git level with you somehow, Kiddie, sure's a steel trap. You've made him your enemy—a dangerous enemy—an' he ain't no tenderfoot in villainy. He's cunnin' as a coyote, he's unscrup'lous, an' he's clever. Real clever, he is."
Kiddie's glance was roving over the land in search of the fugitive. He was not seriously concerned at the disappearance of the Indian chief; nevertheless, his pride was hurt and he did not conceal his annoyance that his prisoner had escaped so easily.
"Yes," he responded to the Old Man's remarks. "I'd already discovered that he's not an ordinary lazy and small-minded Redskin. There's something unusual about him which I don't quite understand. He's a chief, wearing a chief's war bonnet, with heaps of feathers in it to show the great things he has done; yet he's hardly more than a boy. He's a full-blooded Sioux, yet he has many of the ways and habits of the white man. When I slowed down on Laramie Plain and went back to slacken the lariat about his arms, I spoke to him in his own tongue. He answered in clean-cut English. 'Thank you, stranger,' he said, looking me full in the face as if summing me up. 'That is very much better. And, since you are so considerate, perhaps you will allow me to smoke a cigarette.' Naturally I decided that he was going to do without that smoke. His six-shooter, whether loaded or empty, was too close for me to let him have his hands free to draw it."
"Not but what you'd have been in front of him with your own," wisely commented Gid. "He's alert, he's slick; but not the same as you are, Kiddie."
"You appear to have had experience of him, Gid. Has he molested you before this morning?"