Charley Shafer and George Long were hurrying back to the mountains.
In the shadow of a lodge the girls continued to crouch, until every Indian seemed to have reached the spot where the daring trapper was held in durance vile. Then they rose to their feet and started forward again; but were quickly seized—this time by the squaws themselves, who, prowling around the lodges, had discovered the girls, and a minute later full twenty furious hags surrounded and held the girls, while a legion of feet approached with quick, impatient strides.
Foremost among the warriors was Tom Kyle, minus serape, sword, hat and moccasins. A pistol barrel glittered in either hand, and he pushed his way through the captors with a series of oaths.
“So my birds tried to get away!” he said, with a grim smile of satisfaction, when the torches revealed the pale faces, whose cheeks touched each other, almost. “Well, you find it extremely difficult to fly from Apachedom, eh, my eastern finches? Here, women, give me my own. I return them to the cage, and take good care that they shall not escape again.”
He tore the girls from their captors, and he and the Apaches started back toward the center of the village.
“By George! girls,” he exclaimed, stepping nearer Lina Aiken, “that trapper is in the village. I thought I had finished him; but, somehow or other, I didn’t, and he has guided them two boys to Apache land. I tell you that he never sees another night. He’s got to die to-morrow, as sure as my name is Tom Kyle, and that, girls, is a fixed fact!”
The girls were silent, and, after a long period of quietude, the renegade spoke again:
“Who killed the guard?”
“I did, sir.”
It was Mabel Denison who spoke.