I never felt like asking before."

"I never cared to answer any, Steve, when you did ask 'em. Not so long
as you and I were to be together. Now you're going away from me,
pretty soon, I don't mind telling some things."

"Going away? Do you mean to say you won't go too? Shall you stay and
be a Lipan?"

"You'll go alone, Steve, when you go. That's all."

"Why won't you go with me?"

"That's one of the questions I don't mean to answer. You've told me
all about your family and people. I'll know where to look for you if I
ever come out into the settlements."

"I wish you'd come. You're a white man. You're not a Mexican either.
You're American."

"No, I'm not."

"Not an American?"

"No, Steve, I'm an Englishman. I never told you that before. One
reason I don't want to go back is the very thing that sent me down into
Mexico to settle years and years ago."

"I didn't ask about that."

"No good if you did."

"But you've been a sort of father to me ever since you bought me from
the Lipans, after they cleaned out my uncle's hunting-party, and I
can't bear the thought of leaving you here."

If it had not been for his war-paint, and its contrast with his Saxon
hair and eyes, Steve would have been a handsome, pleasant-looking
boy--tall and strong for his years, but still a good deal of a boy--and
his voice was now trembling in a very un-Indian sort of way. No true
Lipan would have dreamed of betraying any emotion at parting from even
so good a friend as Murray.

"Yes," said the latter, dryly, "they cleaned out the hunting-party.
Your uncle and his men must have run pretty well, for not one of them
lost his scalp or drew a bead on a Lipan. That's one reason they
didn't knock you on the head. They came home laughing, and sold you to
me for six ponies and a pipe."

"I never blamed my uncle. I've always wondered, though, what sort of a
story he told my father and mother."

"Guess he doesn't amount to a great deal."

"He's rich enough, and he's fond of hunting, but there isn't a great
deal of fight in him. He wouldn't make a good Lipan."

The circumstances of Steve's capture were evidently not very creditable
to some of those who were concerned in it, and Murray's tone, in
speaking of the "uncle" who had brought him out into the Texas plains
to lose him so easily, was bitterly contemptuous.

At that moment they were entering the mouth of the gap, and Murray
suddenly dropped all other subjects to