“Does he always give up those, then, that their friends want to ransom?”

“Not by any means; it’s altogether as the notion takes him.  He sports more skulps and topknots than any of his brother-chiefs, and he never lets his stock run low.  As them other varmints creep up onto him, he shoots ahead by scooping in more topknots, and thar’s no use of thar trying to butt ag’in him.  He’s ’way ahead of ’em, and there he’s bound to stay, and they can’t help it.”

“Then he might have used me the same way, after all the pains he took to get me.”

“Jest as like as not.  He is as ugly as the devil himself.  Two years ago he stole a good-looking gal up near Santa Fe.  He had a chance for the biggest kind of ransom; but the poor gal had long, golden hair, and the skunk wanted it for an ornament, and he took it, too, and thinks more of it than any out of his hundred and more.  Arter getting yer home among his people, and arter he’d found out thar’s a good show fur a big ransom from yer father, jest as like as not he’d make up his mind that the best thing he could do would be to knock ye on ther head and raise yer ha’r, and he’d do it, too.”

“Well, thank heaven, none of us are in his hands now, and I pray that he may never get us.”

The three were still standing as close to the edge of the ravine as was prudent, so that the moonlight fell about them.  They were enabled to see quite a long distance up and down the pass, the uncertain light, however, causing objects to assume a fantastic contour, which would have made an inexperienced person uncertain whether he was looking down upon animate or inanimate objects.  They were on the point of moving away, when Fred Munson exclaimed, with some excitement: 

“The country seems to be full of camp-fires or signal-fires.  Yonder is one just started!”

He pointed up the ravine, and to the other side, where an unusually bright star seemed to be rising over the solitude beyond.  It was about a quarter of a mile away, and its brightness such as to show its nature.

“Yes, that’s one of ’em,” said the scout, in a tone which showed that he had no particular interest in it.

“Can ye rade what the same manes?” asked Mickey, who was gradually accumulating a wonderful faith in the woodcraft of the scout.

But the latter laughed.  It would have been the height of absurdity for him to have pretended that he could make anything of the meaning of a simple fire burning at night.  It was only when actual signals were made that he could tell what they were intended for.

“It’s some of the ’Paches, I s’pose.  Lone Wolf is in trouble, but I don’t know as we’ve got anything to do with it.  The night is getting along, and we ought to be back to camp by this time.”

Without waiting longer, he turned about and moved back into the wood, followed by his two friends.