“You cleaned ’em out this time,” said he, as he sat on his mustang, hesitating a few minutes, until several of the sentinels that had been sent out could come in with their reports; “you cleaned them out this time,” he repeated, “but don’t you think on that account they’ll stay away.  As I observed to you some time ago, I know something ’bout that varmint, and he’ll be back agin, and you kin bet your bottom dollar on it.  He’ll fetch a pile of the dogs at his back, and he’ll clean out this place so complete that a fortnight from now a microscope won’t be able to tell where the town of New Boston stood.”

“And you urge us to give over the attempt to make a settlement here?” remarked Barnwell, with his old cynical smile.

“For the present I do; I don’t ax you to give it up forever, mind, but only to wait some fifty or seventy-five years, till I get a chance to wipe out Lone Wolf, and things become sorter quieted down like.  It’s better to get out of bed than it is to be kicked out, and you must take your choice.”

“But we are here, and why should we not stay?”

“The best reason is ’cause you can’t.  I don’t know as there’s any better.  It’s only fifty miles to Fort Severn, and you can make it easy in two or three days with your teams and baggage.  You’ve traveled the plains long ’nough to understand how the thing is done.”

At this juncture the three men who had been sent out in different directions on a reconnoissance came in with their report.  One of them had climbed the very tree in which Fred Munson had taken refuge.  This gave him an extended view of the surrounding country.  One of the others had devoted himself to a careful examination of the river, while the third scanned the prairie in another direction.  The result in every case was the failure to detect any signs of the Apaches.

Sut Simpson waved his friends a good-by and galloped up the slope, where he took the trail of the Indians and at once set off in quest of his young friend, who was a captive in their hands.

CHAPTER XII THE YOUNG CAPTIVE

The experience of Fred Munson as a prisoner among the Apaches was one which he was not likely to forget to his dying day.  From the back of the steed where he was held a captive he gained an indistinct view of the short, savage struggle between Lone Wolf and Sut Simpson, and more than once he concluded that it was all over with the daring hunter, who had ventured out with the purpose of befriending him.  But when the chieftain returned to his warriors alone and without any scalp strung to his girdle, he knew that the fellow had pulled through all right.

Lone Wolf was so exasperated at his treatment that he hovered around for a short time with his entire force, in the hope of balancing accounts with his old enemy.  But he soon saw, however, the utter impossibility of that in the present shape of things, and so he summoned all his warriors together and moved off in a northerly direction, his purpose being, as the hunter said, to return with a force which would prove itself invincible.