took a look. Of course, I expected to see
everything up in smoke, but I nearly got up and yelled when I see
everything all right, and old Sukey, the pack-mule, and Johnny's hoss
hitched up as peaceful as babies to the corral.

"THAT'S all right!" thinks I, "they're back in their camp, and haven't
discovered Johnny yet. I'll snail him out of there."

So I ran down the hill and into the shack. Johnny sat in his
chair--what there was of him. He must have got in about two hours
before sundown, for they'd had lots of time to put in on him. That's
the reason they'd stayed so long up the draw. Poor old Johnny! I was
glad it was night, and he was dead. Apaches are the worst Injuns there
is for tortures. They cut off the bottoms of old man Wilkins's feet,
and stood him on an ant-hill--.

In a minute or so, though, my wits gets to work.

"Why ain't the shack burned?" I asks myself, "and why is the hoss and
the mule tied all so peaceful to the corral?"

It didn't take long for a man who knows Injins to answer THOSE
conundrums. The whole thing was a trap--for me--and I'd walked into
it, chuckle-headed as a prairie-dog!

With that I makes a run outside--by now it was dark--and listens. Sure
enough, I hears hosses. So I makes a rapid sneak back over the trail.

Everything seemed all right till I got up to the rim-rock. Then I
heard more hosses--ahead of me. And when I looked back I could see
some Injuns already at the shack, and starting to build a fire outside.

In a tight fix, a man is pretty apt to get scared till all hope is
gone. Then he is pretty apt to get cool and calm. That was my case.
I couldn't go ahead--there was those hosses coming along the trail. I
couldn't go back--there was those Injins building the fire. So I
skirmished around till I got a bright star right over the trail head,
and I trained old Meat-in-the-pot to bear on that star, and I made up
my mind that when the star was darkened I'd turn loose. So I lay there
a while listening. By and by the star was blotted out, and I cut
loose, and old Meat-in-the-pot missed fire--she never did it before nor
since; I think that cartridge--

Well, I don't know where the Injins came from, but it seemed as if the
hammer had hardly clicked before three or four of them bad piled on me.
I put up the best fight I could, for I wasn't figuring to be caught
alive, and this miss-fire deal had fooled me all along the line. They
surely had a lively time.