ll be a bobtail flush. What have we to live for but
vengeance on the white man and a little booze now and then? Nothing! Our
squaws once were beautiful as the wild flowers of the prairie, but now
the prize beauty of our tribe is Malt Extract Maria, whose nose is out
of joint, whose eyes are skewed, whose teeth are covered with fine-cut
tobacco, and who lost one of her ears last week by accidentally getting
it into the mouth of her husband.

"My brothers, we are not built to weep. It is not the way of the noble
red man. A few more summers and we will be no more. We will have kicked
the stuffing out of the bucket and wended our way up the golden stair.
But before we cough up the ghost it behooves us to strike one last blow
at the hated paleface. When we get a chance at a paleface it is our duty
to do him, and do him bad. Are you on?

"We have been successful in capturing a few of our hated foes, and they
are bound and helpless near at hand. Shall they be fricasseed, broiled,
fried, or made into a potpie? That is the question before the meeting,
and I am ready to listen to others. Let us hear from Squint-eyed
Sausageface."

"It doesn't make a dit of bifference--I mean a bit of difference to me
how I have my paleface cooked," said the one indicated as Squint-eyed
Sausageface. "Perhaps it would be well enough to cook them at the
stake."

"I think that would be the proper mode," gravely declared another
warrior; "for I have heard that they boast they are hot stuff. They
should not boast in vain."

"Warriors," said Hole-in-his-Face, "you have heard. What have you to
say?"

"So mote it be," came solemnly from one.

"Yah! yah! yah!" yelled the others.

"That settles it, as the sugar remarked to the egg dropped into the
coffee. Prepare the torture stakes."

There was a great bustle, and in a short time the stakes were prepared
and driven into the ground, one of the savages hammering them down with
a huge stick of wood.

Then the captives were bound to the stakes and a lot of brush was
brought and piled about their feet.

Some of the sophs actually looked scared, but Browning kept up a
continual fire of sarcastic remarks.

"Ugh!" grunted Hole-in-his-Face. "This paleface talks heap much. Remove
his outer garments, so the fire may reach his flesh without delay."

Then Browning was held and his clothes were stripped off till he stood
in his under garments, barefooted, bareheaded, and still defiant.

"Oh, say!" he m