At sunset we stopped, and I was taken from my pony and thrown to the ground.  I managed, in spite of my bonds, to sit up and look about me.

We were on the top of Pawnee Rock.  The heat of the day was spent and all the radiant tints of evening were making the silent prairies unspeakably beautiful.  I do not know why I should have noted or remembered any of this, save that the mind sometimes gathers impressions under strange stress of suffering.  I had had no food all day, and when our ponies stopped to drink, the agony of thirst was maddening.  My tongue was swollen and my lips were cracked and bleeding.  The leather thongs that bound me cut deep now.  But—­only the men who lived it can know what all this meant to the pioneer of the trail.

I have sat on the same spot at sunset many a time in these my sunset years; have gazed in tranquil joy at the whole panorama of the heavens that hang over the prairies in the opalescent splendor of the after-sunset hour; have looked out over the earthly paradise of waving grain, all glowing with the golden gleam of harvest, in the heart of the rich Kansas wheat-lands—­and somehow I’m glad of soul that I foreran this day and—­maybe—­maybe I, too, helped somewhat to build the way—­the way that Esmond Clarenden had helped to clear a decade before and was building then.

The six Indians gathered near me.  One of them with unmerciful mercy loosened my bonds a trifle and gave me a sup of water.  They did not want me to die too soon.  Then they sat down to eat and drink.  I did not shut my eyes, nor turn my head.  I defied their power to crush me, and the very defiance gave me strength.

The chill air of evening blew about the brow of the rock, the twilight deepened, and down in the valley the shadows were beginning to hide the landscape.  But the evening hour is long on the headlands.  And there was ample time for another kind of council than that to which I had listened three mornings ago, when I had been set free to bear a friendly message to my chief.

They carried me—­helpless in their hands—­to where, unseen myself, and secured by rock fragment and rawhide thong, I could see far up the trail to the eastward.  But I could give no signal of distress, save for the feeble call of my swollen, thirst-parched throat.  Then the six bronze sons of the plains sat down before me, and looked at me.  Looked!  I never see a pair of beady black eyes to-day—­and there are many such—­that I do not long to kill somebody, so vivid yet is the memory of those murdering eyes looking at me.

At last they spoke—­plains English, it is true—­but clear to give their meaning.

“Chief Clarenden thinks Kiowas forget.  He comes with little train across the prairies; Kiowas go to meet big train east and fight fair for Mexican brothers who hate Chief Clarenden.  They do not stop to look for little sneaking coyotes when they seek big game.  Clarenden steals away Kiowas’ captive Hopi.  Cheat Kiowas of big pay that white Medicine-man Josef would give for her.  Mexican brothers and Kiowa tribe hate Clarenden.  They take his son, you, to show Clarenden they can steal, too.  Hopi girl! white brave! all the same.”