"Reckon we kin with white men like you. So'll all the rest, when we tell 'em it don't cover the mine. You take your own chances on that?"
"We do."
"Tell you what now, old man, there's something about you that ain't so bad, arter all."
"You and your mates travel!" was the only reply.
They plunged into the thicket for their horses, and when they came out again Murray and Steve had disappeared.
"Gone, have they?" said Bill. "And we don't know any more about 'em than we did before. What'll Captain Skinner say?"
"What'll we say to him? That's what beats me. And to the boys? I don't keer to tell 'em we was whipped in a minute and tied up by an old man, a boy, two girl squaws, and a red-skin."
"It don't tell well, that's a fact."
Murray had beckoned to Steve to follow him.
"They might have kept their word, Steve, and they might not. We were at their mercy, standing out there. They could have shot us from the cover. That's the kind of white men that stir up nine-tenths of all the troubles with the Indians, let alone the Apaches; that tribe never did keep a treaty."