"I've got him," said Yellow Pine. "Run for a rope. You're jest the luckiest youngster I ever knowed."
By the time the rope was there, every man in camp was up and out, and the grass and weeds within sight had rifle muzzles pointed at everything among them as big as a human head.
"No whoopin' sounded," said Yellow Pine. "This cub was alone. I say, you young coyote, you jest answer my questions now, or I'll tan the hide clean off ye."
Two Arrows drew himself up proudly and looked at him in silence, but Pine led his captive on into the fire-light and picked up a heavy "black-snake" whip, for he was justly angry.
It was a terrible come-down for the ambition of a young chief. Captured on his first raid and threatened with a horsewhipping. He felt ready to burst, but it was not with vanity this time.
"Where's yer band? Where's their camp?" asked Pine, with a significant flourish of the black-snake, but the Indian boy looked him unflinchingly in the face without a sound or a motion.
"Speak, now," began Pine; but Sile had finished answering some hurried questions from his father, and he now asked one for himself.
"I say, Yellow Pine, didn't I grab him first? Isn't he my prisoner as much as he is yours?"
"What do you mean?"
"Well, now, I don't want him flogged. He didn't use his knife. You always said it was best to be friends with 'em."