had little
to say to each other.

"Is that what you call Pike's Peak, Bill?" Rex asked.

"No, the mountains are a month away. That's Pawnee Rock, and I'll
breathe a lot freer when we get out of sight of that infernal thing,"
Bill replied.

"What's its offense?" Rex inquired.

"It's the peak of perdition, the bottomless pit turned inside out," Bill
declared.

"I don't see the excuse for a rock sittin' out here, sayin' nothin',
bein' called all manner of unpleasant names," the young Bostonian
insisted.

"Well, I reckon you'd find one mighty quick if you ever heard the
soldiers at Fort Leavenworth talk about it once. All the plainsmen dread
it. Jondo says more men have been killed right around this old stone
Sphinx than any other one spot in North America, outside of
battle-fields."

"Happy thought! Do their ghosts rise up and walk at midnight? Tell me
more," Rex urged.

"Nobody walks. Everybody runs. There was a terrible Indian fight here
once; the Pawnees in the king-row, and all the hosts of the Midianites,
and Hivites, and Jebusites, Kiowa, Comanche, and Kaw, rag-tag and
bobtail, trying to get 'em out. I don't know who won, but the citadel
got christened Pawnee Rock. It took a fountain filled with blood to do
it, though."

Rex Krane gave a long whistle.

"I believe Bill is trying to scare him, Bev," I murmured.

"I believe he's just precious wasting time," Beverly replied.

"And so," Bill continued, "it came to be a sort of rock of execution
where romances end and they die happily ever afterward. The Indians get
up there and, being able to read fine print with ease as far away as
either seacoast, they can watch any wagon-train from the time it leaves
Council Grove over east to Bent's Fort on the Purgatoire Creek out west;
and having counted the number of men, and the number of bullets in each
man's pouch, they slip down and jump on the train as it goes by. If the
men can make it to beat them to the top of the rock, as they do
sometimes, they can keep the critters off, unless the Indians are strong
enough to keep them up there and sit around and wait till they starve
for water, and have to come down. It's a grim old fortress, and never
needs a garrison. Indians or white men up there, sometimes they defend
and sometimes attack. But it's a bad place always, and on account of
having our little girl along--" Bill paused. "A fellow gets to see a lot
of country out here," he added.

"Banney, just why didn'