ame within hail. After that the questions and
answers chased each other back and forth until the entire account of
Sile's hunt and its ending was perfectly understood.

Sile saw his father shudder and turn pale, and then flush fiery red,
while he described his encounter with the Apache. He had dismounted
before he got to that, and the next thing he felt was a pair of arms
around him, and he heard Yellow Pine exclaim,

"I could a'most hug the young rooster myself. It was jest the gamest
kind of thing to do. I say, Sile, he barked ye on yer left arm. I'd call
it, now, if that there wasn't close work. Take yer jacket off."

Sile had hardly paid any attention to that matter, although his arm had
felt a little stiff, and there was really not much of a hurt. In another
instant his father was saying so, but he said it with a peculiar look
upon his face. The Indian's bullet had been a "Minie-ball," of course,
and, as it grazed his arm, one of its ragged edges had torn through the
cloth and touched the flesh only just enough to break the skin and draw
a little blood. Sile could fairly say he was "wounded," and no more, and
Yellow Pine remarked,

"Reckon we won't send ye to the hospital for that; but I'm all-fired
glad it didn't go any nigher. It's jest on a line to where it would ha'
knocked yer arm off, if it had struck onto the bone. It's the narrerest
kind of an escape."

Judge Parks had nothing more to say, for some reason, and seemed willing
that Sile should go right on with further particulars of the day.

"Two Arrows is right," said Pine. "He'd know a war-party, sure. It's war
with us, anyhow, and there isn't but one thing to be done. The men must
knock off from the house, and come right down and block this 'ere
opening with logs and rocks. We can make the best kind of a rifle-pit.
Only leave room for one man, or for one hoss at a time, to get in or
out."

"That's it," said the judge. "Now, Sile, come along. You must let the
men see what you've been up to. They'll know exactly what it means."

Sile had a curious sense of bashfulness about it, but he followed his
father, and in a few minutes more the rough, bearded, red-shirted
fellows were giving him three of the most ringing cheers he had ever
heard. Ha-ha-pah-no and Na-tee-kah looked at him with something that was
half wonder. They could not have believed it, but for the horse and the
lance, and the rifle and the belt. Here was the Red-head, a mere
pale-face bo