If it had not been for his war-paint, and its contrast with his Saxon hair and eyes, Steve would have been a handsome, pleasant-looking boy, tall and strong for his years, but still a good deal of a boy, and his voice was now trembling in a very un-Indian sort of way. No true Lipan would have dreamed of betraying any emotion at parting from even so good a friend as Murray.
"Yes," said the latter, dryly, "they cleaned out the hunting party. Your uncle and his men must have run pretty well, for not one of them lost his scalp, or drew a bead on a Lipan. That's one reason they didn't knock you on the head. They came home laughing, and sold you to me for six ponies and a pipe."
"I never blamed my uncle. I've always wondered, though, what sort of a story he told my father and mother."
"Guess he doesn't amount to a great deal."
"He's rich enough, and he's fond of hunting, but there isn't a great deal of fight in him. He wouldn't make a good Lipan."
The circumstances of Steve's capture were evidently not very creditable to some of those who were concerned in it, and Murray's tone in speaking of the "uncle" who had brought him out into the Texas plains to lose him so easily was bitterly contemptuous.
At that moment they were entering the mouth of the gap, and Murray suddenly dropped all other subjects to exclaim,
"We've struck it, Steve."
"Struck what?"
"A regular cañon. See, the walls are almost perpendicular, and the bottom comes down from ledge to ledge like a flight of stairs."