mean to stay here till morning?"
"It is as Lone Wolf wills," was the instant answer, in a voice not quite
so severe, indicating a subsidence of the troubled waters.
"And what are you going to do with me?" was the next question, which no
one besides a lad of Ned's age would have dared to put, when placed in a
similar position.
"That, too, is as Lone Wolf wills," was the rather non-committal answer.
"And that is the reason why I asked you. How soon can I return to my
father? When I reach him I will tell him that it was Lone Wolf that sent
me back and he will be friendly toward him."
"Lone Wolf asks not his friendship," said the chieftain, with something
of the old fire gleaming in his eye. "He has killed our bravest and best
warriors. He has followed them to the mountains and slain them by their
camp fires, when they dreamed not that the white man was near. He has
murdered their squaws; and Lone Wolf shall not die until he tears his
scalp from his head."
The poor boy was horrified. He was too young to understand fully the
causes of such deep enmity upon the part of the chieftain, but he was
not too young to understand that his own life had been spared through no
sentiment of mercy. The leader had some other cause, but Ned did not see
much hope of making a favorable impression upon this intractable chief,
and he would have been very much relieved had he taken himself off and
left him alone.
Some fifteen minutes had passed since the lad had opened his eyes upon
the strange scene by which he was surrounded, and the preparations which
seemed to be going on were completed. The entire Apache troop suddenly
broke out in a series of whoops and yells that would have appalled a
hundred famishing wolves. At the same instant they began dancing--not a
motion of the feet, such as we are accustomed to see in civilized
regions, but a series of demoniac gymnastics, risking the dislocation of
all the bones in their bodies. They leaped up and down, swung their
arms, threw out their legs, and circled around each other--the whole
forming a wild and appalling revelry more like that of wild beasts than
of human beings.
Boy-like, Ned Chadmund forgot everything else for the time but the scene
which was passing directly before his eyes. There was a weird attraction
in watching the flitting, fantastic figures, whose hands were yet
reeking with the blood of innocent men and whose greatest delight would
have been to scalp every man,
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