e nor Murray made
any remarks about it. They were too much absorbed in looking along
their rifle-barrels to do any talking. Both reports came together,
almost like one.

They were not followed by any spring from the cougar. Only by a growl
and an angry tearing at the gravel, and then there was no danger that
any more big-horns, living or dead, would ever be stolen by that
panther.

"Well, Steve, if this isn't the biggest kind of sport! Never saw
anything better in all my life."

"A buck, a big-horn, and a painter before sundown!"

"It'll be sundown before we get them all in. We'd better start for
some ponies and some help. Tell you what, Steve, I don't care much for
it myself, but the Lipans would rather eat that cougar than the best
venison ever was killed."

"I suppose they would; but I ain't quite Indian enough for that,
war-paint or no war-paint."

So, indeed, it proved; and To-la-go-to-de indulged in more than one
sarcastic gibe at his less successful hunters over the manner in which
they had been beaten by "No Tongue and the Yellow Head--an old
pale-face and a boy." He even went so far as to say to Steve Harrison,
"Good shot. The Yellow Head will be a chief some day. He must kill
many Apaches. Ugh!"

CHAPTER VII

When Steve Harrison and his friend left the ruins of the ancient town
behind them, they had good reason to suppose that they were going away
from a complete solitude--a place where even wild Indians did not very
often come.

It looked desolate enough with its scattered enclosures of rough stone,
not one of them with any roof on, or any sign that people had lived in
them for a hundred years at least. The windows in the tumbling walls
had probably never had either sash or glass in them, and the furniture,
whatever it may have been, used by the people who built the village had
long since disappeared.

It could never have been a very large or populous town, but it could
hardly at any time have had a wilder-looking set of inhabitants than
were the party of men who drew near it at about the time when Steve and
Murray were killing their cougar.

Two tilted wagons, a good deal the worse for wear, apparently pretty
heavily laden, and drawn by six mules each, were accompanied by about
two dozen men on horseback. Their portraits would have made the
fortune of any picture-gallery in the world. Everybody would have gone
to look at such a collection of bearded desperadoes.

They wer