that he could help in the progress. It was a long, cold
struggle, and when at last they touched the sloping low bank on the
other side, Long-Hair had fairly to lift his chilled and exhausted
prisoner to the top.

"Ugh, cold," he grunted, beginning to pound and rub Beverley's arms,
legs and body. "Make warm, damn heap!"

All this he did with his right hand, holding the tomahawk in his left.

It was a strange, bewildering experience out of which the young man
could not see in any direction far enough to give him a hint upon which
to act. In a few minutes Long-Hair jerked him to his feet and said:

"Go."

It was just light enough to see that the order had a tomahawk to
enforce it withal. Long-Hair indicated the direction and drove Beverley
onward as fast as he could.

"Try run 'way, kill, damn!" he kept repeating, while with his left hand
on the young man's shoulder he guided him from behind dexterously
through the wood for some distance. Then he stopped and grunted, adding
his favorite expletive, which he used with not the least knowledge of
its meaning. To him the syllable "damn" was but a mouthful of forcible
wind.

They had just emerged from a thicket into an open space, where the
ground was comparatively dry. Overhead the stars were shining in great
clusters of silver and gold against a dark, cavernous looking sky, here
and there overrun with careering black clouds. Beverley shivered, not
so much with cold as on account of the stress of excitement which
amounted to nervous rigor. Long-Hair faced him and leaned toward him,
until his breathing was audible and his massive features were dimly
outlined. A dragon of the darkest age could not have been more
repulsive.

"Ugh, friend, damn!"

Beverley started when these words were followed by a sentence in an
Indian dialect somewhat familiar to him, a dialect in which he had
tried to talk with Long-Hair during the day's march. The sentence,
literally translated, was:

"Long-Hair is friendly now."

A blow in the face could not have been so surprising. Beverley not only
started, but recoiled as if from a sudden and deadly apparition. The
step between supreme exhilaration and utter collapse is now and then
infinitesimal. There are times, moreover, when an expression on the
face of Hope makes her look like the twin sister of Despair. The moment
falling just after Long-Hair spoke was a century condensed in a breath.

"Long-Hair is friendly now; will white man be fr