"Colonel Edward Chadmund."

"Is he at the fort, yonder?" continued Lone Wolf, stretching out his
hand so as to point toward the southwest.

"Yes; he is the commandant there, and has a large number of brave
soldiers, and will send them out to take me to him."

Had Ned been a few years older, he would not have made this reply. It
was not politic to threaten the chief; and he had no suspicion that the
confession of the identity of his father only intensified the hatred of
these redskins before him. But perhaps, after all, it was as well; for
Lone Wolf was sagacious enough to recollect that he was talking to a
child, from whom he was more likely to hear truth than from an older
person.

"He has sent some brave soldiers to take you to him," said the chief,
with a wolf-like grin, displaying his long, yellow teeth. "But they have
left you on the way; they have given you to Lone Wolf, and they will not
go back to the fort, nor to Santa Fe. If he sends more, they will do the
same."

"There were only a dozen of them, while you had hundreds. If they had
had anything like an equal chance, not one of the Apaches would have
been left alive! We would have killed them all!"

This was a brave answer, in a certain sense, but it was not a very
prudent one; for Lone Wolf was known to be the possessor of a fearful
temper, easily excited into a tempest of passion; and the words of the
boy were not calculated to be very soothing to him. There was too much
paint upon the face of the chieftain for the boy to observe the flush
which overspread it at hearing himself addressed in this manner, but he
could understand the lowering of that gruff voice and the quickening of
the utterance.

"Lone Wolf and his brave Apaches care nothing for the soldiers of the
Father at Washington. His agents deceive us; they make treaties and do
not keep them; they lie to us, and then we turn upon and rend them. Do
you see that?"

As he uttered this inquiry in the fiercest kind of language, he whipped
out from beneath his blanket the reeking scalp of one of the soldiers
that had fallen in the gorge a short time before, and shook it in the
face of the terrified lad. The latter could not fail to see what it was,
and drew back in horror and disgust, realizing what a bloodthirsty
monster stood before him. He saw that it would never do to excite the
other's anger, and he endeavored to turn the conversation into another
channel.

"Do you and your brave warriors