he
made Ho Sen, who was trembling like a leaf, interpret the things he
wanted me to know.

"'Foreign devil,' he said, 'what is worth more than your life to you?
Ai, I know. This child is worth to you more than your life, therefore
will I take him away.' And then he uncovered the baby's back and showed
me a livid mark on the little chap's shoulder. 'See,' he said, 'he
belongs to Red Knife now; he wears Red Knife's mark. My women will be
_very_ good to this little son of the foreigner. We will bring him up in
our band; he will be clever like the white man. Who knows, perhaps he
will be as good a thief as Red Knife himself!'

"I tried to think of something that I could say or do that would move
this wretch's heart, but it was of no use. Poor Ho Sen was frightened to
death, and when I begged him to try to escape and bring help from the
village I little thought that he could do anything.

"'Take the boy back to the village,' I said to Red Knife through the
interpreter, 'and do with me as you will.'

"'Yes, I will do with you as I will,' was his answer. 'I think I will
put you in a hole in the ground and perhaps I will give you a toad and a
lizard to keep you company. Red Knife wants no one to be lonely.'

"Red Knife--I've always supposed--did intend to put me out of the way by
some diabolical method of his own. And then the idea of holding me for
ransom apparently occurred to him, for he kept me in the stone house
back in the hills day after day. Two or three times when I saw Ho Sen I
begged him to run away from the bandits and take the little boy with him
and tell my friends in the village where we were, but Ho Sen only looked
at me and trembled. I couldn't much blame him for being terrified.

"One night there was a jabbering and yelling round the stone house and I
thought Red Knife had killed Ho Sen, for I saw him no more. Two days
later there was more commotion and the whole band began to prepare to
depart. I hoped that an expedition had come from the town--and that in
fact was actually what happened. Some of the Imperial Government troops
led by the white men were on Red Knife's trail, but Red Knife knew those
hills too well. He and his gang went farther back and took me along,
helpless. The horrible part of it all was that the little boy seemed to
have disappeared, and when I asked what had become of him these yellow
men only jabbered at me in their outlandish tongue. We traveled all day
and all night and finally