agent. It will help
you to understand their demands if I state that the afternoon's work
has been far from satisfactory. So many of the canoes were overturned
that the plumes secured will not amount to more than seven hundred
dollars where my friends expected to reap as many thousand as the fruit
of their labor."

"Come to the point," said Charley, impatiently, his eyes shifting
anxiously to the declining sun.

The other's tone grew still more bitterly sarcastic. "We have been
bitterly disappointed," he declared. "My brave, valiant companions
have suffered sorely in body and spirit. You saw them engage a mighty
fleet of a race whose color was an offense in their eyes. It was also
rumored that the fleet contained many thousands of dollars in bird
plumes which it was clearly wrong to leave in the possession of those
who would not know how to spend the money intelligently.

"It is true my dear companions kept in the shelter of the largest
trees, but the incautious ones,--there was an arm barked here and a leg
scratched there, and pain stalked abroad in our midst. Then, when the
battle was over, judge of the bitterness of mind of my noble comrades
when they searched the canoes not overturned and found less than seven
hundred dollars' worth of plumes, barely enough for one good right's
drunk and carouse in town."

Charley was interested in spite of himself in this gay, humorous young
outlaw, who was so evidently superior to his brutal companions, and he
would have liked to let him come to the point in his own amusing way,
but the sun was getting low, and he feared to waste more time. "Cut
out your nonsense and come to the point," he said curtly. "What do you
want with us?"

The other dropped his mocking tone. "We want that chief and his boy,
whom you are harboring in your camp. According to our Indian
companion, they own, or know of the hiding-place of, a fortune in
plumes. If the plumes are not to be easily reached, we can still hold
the chief and boy for a big ransom. His people will raise it quick
enough, for he is a big man among them." He hesitated and then went
on. "The gang said for me to tell you, if the chief and boy were given
up, your party would not be troubled further."

Charley smiled incredulously. "And what do you say?" he demanded.

"That whether you give them up or not, you are all as good as dead,"
exclaimed the other in a burst of frankness. "Good Lord, boy, do you
dream that th