seemed waiting for something.

At length, out of the darkness advanced a tall, well-built warrior, the
trailing plumes of whose war bonnet reached quite to the ground. If
anything, this fellow was more hideously painted than any of the others,
and there was an air of distinction about him that proclaimed him a
great chief.

"Ugh!" he grunted. "I am here."

The savages arose, and one of them said:

"Fellow warriors, the mighty chief Fale-in-his-Hoce--I mean
Hole-in-his-Face--has arrived."

Then a wild yell of greeting went up to the twinkling stars, and every
savage brandished a tomahawk, scalping knife, or some other kind of
weapon.

"Brothers," said Hole-in-his-Face, "I see that I am welcome in your
midst, as any up-to-date country newspaper reporter would say. You have
received me with great _eclat_--excuse my French; I was educated
abroad--in New Jersey."

"Go back to Princeton!" cried one of the captives.

"Fellow warriors," continued Hole-in-his-Face, without noticing the
interruption, "I am heap much proud to be with you on this momentous
occasion."

"Yah! yah! yah!" yelled the savages.

"And now," the chief went on, "if you will proceed to squat on your
haunches I will orate a trifle."

Once more the redskins sat down on the ground, and then the late arrival
struck an attitude and began his oration:

"Warriors of my people, why are we assembled together to-night?"

"Because we couldn't assemble apart," murmured a voice.

"We are assembled to avenge our wrongs upon the hated paleface," the
chief declared. "It was long ago that the proud and haughty paleface got
the bulge on the red man, and we have not been in the game to any great
extent since then. Every time we have held two pairs he has come in with
one pair of sixes or a Winchester and raked the pot. He has not given us
any kind of a show for our white alley. Whenever we seemed to be getting
along fairly well and doing a little something, he has wrung in a cold
deck on us and then shot us full of air holes, purely for the purpose of
ventilation in case we objected. Warriors, we have grown tired of being
soaked in the neck."

"That's right," nodded a savage, "unless we are soaked in the neck with
fire water."

"At last," shouted the orator--"at last we have arisen in our wrath and
our war paint and we are out for scalps. We have decided that the joy of
the red man is fleeting. To-night a flush mantles your dark cheeks, but
to-morrow it wi