“Watusk, for God’s sake, what do you mean to do?” he cried.

Watusk was intensely gratified by the white man’s alarm.  He smiled insolently.  “Ah!” he said.  “You on’erstan’ now!”

“You fool!” cried Ambrose.  “If you fire on the police you’ll be wiped clean off the earth!  The whole power of the government will descend on your head!  There won’t be a single Kakisa left to tell the story of what happened!”

Watusk’s face turned ugly.  His eyes bolted.  “Shut up!” he snarled, “or I gag you.”

Ambrose, bethinking himself that he might use his voice to good purpose later, clenched his teeth and said no more.

At sunrise a fresh breeze sprang up from the south.  Soon after a whisper of distant trotting horses was home upon it.  Ambrose’s heart leaped to his throat.  An excited murmur ran among the Indians.  They picked up their guns.

Watusk’s pit was one of the pair covering the upper entrance to the valley.  It was thus farthest away from the approaching horsemen.  It faced straight down the valley.  Through the lower gap they caught the gleam of the red coats.

Ambrose beheld them with a painfully contracted heart.  He gaged in his mind how far his voice might carry.  The wind was against him.

Presumably he would only be allowed to cry out once, so it behooved him to make sure it was heard.  However, the same thought was in the minds of the Indians.  They scowled at him suspiciously.

Suddenly, while it was yet useless for him to cry out, they fell upon him, bearing him to the ground!

CHAPTER XXXIII.

THE TEST.

After a fierce struggle Ambrose was securely bound and gagged.  He managed to get to his feet again.  His soul sickened at the tragedy it forecast, yet he had to look.

To his overwhelming relief he saw that the redcoats had halted in the lower entrance to the valley.  Evidently the possibility of an ambush in so favored a spot had occurred to their leader.  The baggage was sent back.

His relief was short-lived.  Presently the advance was resumed at a walk, and a pair of skirmishers sent out on either side to mount the hills.  Ambrose counted sixteen redcoats in the main body, and a man in plain clothes, evidently a native guide.

One skirmisher on the left was headed all unconscious straight for a rifle pit.  Ambrose, suffocated by his impotence, tugged at his bonds and groaned under the gag.  “Turn back!  Turn back!” shouted his voiceless tongue.

There was a shot.  Ambrose closed his eyes expecting a fusillade to follow.  It did not come.  From his pit, Watusk hissed a negative order.

Ambrose heard a shrill whistle from the bottom of the valley, and opening his eyes, he saw the skirmishers riding slowly back to the main body.  Even at the distance their nonchalant air was evident.