e. 'You can talk as well as I can, and you're
a going to tell us about this Injun killin'. Don't try any fake
business, or I'll roast your little heels over that fire like yams.'

"I just acted the dummy, wiggled my fingers, and handed him the
joyful gaze, heliographing with my teeth as though I was glad to see
visitors. However, I wondered if that runt would really give my
chilblains a treat. He looked like a West Pointer, and I didn't know
but he'd try to haze me.

"Well! they 'klow-towed' around there for an hour looking for clues,
but I'd hid all the signs of Kink, so finally they strapped me onto a
horse and we hit back for the fort.

"The little man tried all kinds of tricks to make me loosen on the
way down, but I just acted wounded innocence and 'Ee'd' and 'Ah'd' at
him till he let me alone.

"When we rode up to the post he says to the Colonel:

"'We've got the only man there is in the mountains back there, sir,
but he's playing dumb. I don't know what his game is.'

"'Dumb, eh?' says the old man, looking me over pretty keen. 'Well! I
guess we'll find his voice if he's got one.'

"He took me inside, and speaking of examinations, probably I didn't
get one. He kept looking at me like he wanted to place me, but I
give him the 'Ee! Ah!' till everybody began to laugh. They tried me
with a pencil and paper, but I balked, laid my ears back, and
buck-jumped. That made the old man sore, and he says: 'Lock him up!
Lock him up; I'll make him talk if I have to skin him.' So I was
dragged to the 'skookum-house,' where I spent the night figuring out
my finish.

"I could feel it coming just as plain, and I begun to see that when I
did open up and prattle after Kink was safe, nobody wouldn't believe
my little story. I had sized the Colonel up as a dead stringy old
proposition, too. He was one of these big-chopped fellers with a
mouth set more'n half way up from his chin and little thin lips like
the edge of a knife blade, and just as full of blood--face, big and
rustic-finished.

"I says to myself, 'Bud, it looks like you wouldn't be forced to
prospect for a living any more this season. If that old sport turns
himself loose you're going to get 'life' three times and a holdover.'

"Next morning they tried every way to make me talk. Once in a while
the old man looked at me puzzled and searching, but I didn't know him
from a sweat-pad, and just paid strict attention to being dumb.

"It was mighty hard,