“Perhaps he’s deaf,” the Star and Moon cowpuncher whispered to Dude.
This aspersion upon his faculties unloosed the floodgates.
“Me no deaf,” snorted the aged scout. “Neither is Scalping Louie. No wonder paleface no get near um. Make noise like squaws. Louie maybe hear um and cum see um. See Nig and vamoose. Paleface heap fool. Louie think Nig in swamp, break for anywhere. Nig have heap trouble trailing him. Paleface either shut um mouth, or Nig no help.”
“What’s it all about?” asked Hawks, turning to the cowboys who had fetched the old scout for an explanation of the torrent of wrath. “Who’s this Louie, anyhow? What’s he got to do with us? Doesn’t the old duffer know it’s the Midnight Raider we’re after?”
“Easy, easy,” grinned Deadshot. “One question at a time.”
“All right. I’ll keep quiet,” returned the owner of the Star and Moon, “only for pity’s sake get busy, and explain what we’ve done to bring down the wrath of this old curmudgeon upon our heads.”
“In the first place, your Midnight Raider is no other than Scalping Louie, the renegade chief from the Piute reservation, whose specialty is descending upon lone ranch houses and settlements and scalping all the women, children and old men he can lay his hands on. He’s broken from the reservation goodness only knows how many times—it seems he was one of the parties from whom I saved Nig last summer—and he’s broken out again within a few weeks.”
If the cowboy desired to produce a sensation by this statement, he succeeded beyond his fondest dreams.
In blank amazement, the men stared at one another and then from Deadshot to old Nig.
“Skull and crossbones, as Sandy says!” exclaimed Bowser. “No wonder we have been outwitted by the fiend. Why, he’s the most dangerous Indian in the country. Only the other day, when I was at the Centre, I signed a petition asking that the devil be sent to the United States prison at Leavenworth—where he couldn’t break out any more.”