get away. He had no clothing for Sile to hold him by, and
there was more and more danger of losing him every moment, but the shout
of warning had hardly begun to rouse the general camp before a pair of
long, sinewy arms wound around poor Two Arrows from behind.

"I've got him," said Yellow Pine. "Run for a rope. You're jest the
luckiest youngster I ever knowed."

By the time the rope was there, every man in camp was up and out, and
the grass and weeds within sight had rifle muzzles pointed at
everything among them as big as a human head.

"No whoopin' sounded," said Yellow Pine. "This cub was alone. I say, you
young coyote, you jest answer my questions now, or I'll tan the hide
clean off ye."

Two Arrows drew himself up proudly and looked at him in silence, but
Pine led his captive on into the fire-light and picked up a heavy
"black-snake" whip, for he was justly angry.

It was a terrible come-down for the ambition of a young chief. Captured
on his first raid and threatened with a horsewhipping. He felt ready to
burst, but it was not with vanity this time.

"Where's yer band? Where's their camp?" asked Pine, with a significant
flourish of the black-snake, but the Indian boy looked him unflinchingly
in the face without a sound or a motion.

"Speak, now," began Pine; but Sile had finished answering some hurried
questions from his father, and he now asked one for himself.

"I say, Yellow Pine, didn't I grab him first? Isn't he my prisoner as
much as he is yours?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, now, I don't want him flogged. He didn't use his knife. You
always said it was best to be friends with 'em."

"I'd call it---- Jedge, it's jest so. Sile's right. I'd kinder lost my
head. Look a-here, redskin, next time you come for hosses you won't get
off so easy. I'll unhitch ye now, and let ye up. There now, Sile, shake
hands with him."

"How?" said Sile, as he held out his hand to the loosened captive.

"How?" said Two Arrows, and he said it a little sullenly, but he had
been glancing from Pine's face to Sile's and understood pretty well that
the latter had stopped the proposed work of the black-snake.

"Make him a present of something, Sile," said his father. "Here--give
him this."

It was a small round pocket-mirror, worth twenty-five cents, but there
was no telling what it was worth in the estimation of such a boy as Two
Arrows--perhaps a pound or so of gold nuggets, if he had them, or the
skin of his grisly b