her
near hand--somewhat of a smaller sort, though jest as much, an' a little
bit more, to my likin'. Ye won't mind my declarin' things that way. As
they say in Mexican Spanish, _cadder uner a soo gooster_ (cada una a su
gusto), every one to his own way o' thinkin', so my belief air that in
this. Gardin o' Eeden thar air two Eves, one o' which, not countin' to
be the mother o' all men, will yit, supposin' this chile to hev his way,
be the mother o' a large family o' young Wilders."

While Hamersley is still smiling at the grotesque prognostication, the
ex-Ranger, seizing hold of his hand, continues,--

"I'm so glad you're a goin' to rekiver. Leavin' out the angels we love,
ther'll be some chance to git square wi' the devils we've sech reezun to
hate. We may yit make them pay dear for the bloody deed they've done in
the murderin' o' our innercent companyuns."

"Amen to that," mutters Hamersley, returning the squeeze of his
comrade's hand with like determined pressure. "Sure as I live, it shall
be so."

CHAPTER THIRTY.

THE RAIDERS RETURNING.

An Indian bivouac. It is upon a creek called "Pecan," a confluent of
the Little Witchita river, which heads about a hundred miles from the
eastern edge of the Llano Estacado.

There are no tents in the encampment; only here and there a blanket or
buffalo robe extended horizontally upon upright poles--branches cut from
the surrounding trees. The umbrageous canopy of the pecans protects the
encamped warriors from the fervid rays of a noonday sun, striking
vertically down.

That they are on the maraud is evidenced by the absence of tents. A
peaceful party, in its ordinary nomadic passage across the prairies,
would have lodges along with it--grand conical structures of painted
buffalo skins--with squaws to set them up, and dogs or ponies to
transport them when struck for another move.

In this encampment on the Pecan are neither squaws, dogs, nor ponies;
only men, naked to the breech clout, their bodies brightly painted from
hip to head, chequered like a hatchment, or the jacket of a stage
harlequin, with its fantastic devices, some ludicrous, others grotesque;
still others of aspect terrible--showing a death's-head and cross-bones.

A prairie man on seeing them would at once say, "Indians on the war
trail!"

It does not need prairie experience to tell they are returning upon it.
If there are no ponies or dogs beside them, there are other animals in
abundance-