n are wounded. As for
Broken Feather--we couldn't have kept him a prisoner, you know. We
have no warrant for his arrest."

"Isa Blagg, the sheriff, is here, right now," Gideon told him. "Isa
c'd have arrested him, legal, I guess."

"Even so," resumed Kiddie, "you would soon have had another raid. The
Redskins would have been here like a shot to liberate their chief and
to retaliate on you for having foiled them in One Tree Gulch."

"Sure," acknowledged the Old Man, leading the way to the stable. "An'
even as matters stand, I'm figurin' as Broken Feather 'll notion ter
have revenge on you fer puttin' the lasso on him. He'll try ter git
level with you somehow, Kiddie, sure's a steel trap. You've made him
your enemy--a dangerous enemy--an' he ain't no tenderfoot in villainy.
He's cunnin' as a coyote, he's unscrup'lous, an' he's clever. Real
clever, he is."

Kiddie's glance was roving over the land in search of the fugitive. He
was not seriously concerned at the disappearance of the Indian chief;
nevertheless, his pride was hurt and he did not conceal his annoyance
that his prisoner had escaped so easily.

"Yes," he responded to the Old Man's remarks. "I'd already discovered
that he's not an ordinary lazy and small-minded Redskin. There's
something unusual about him which I don't quite understand. He's a
chief, wearing a chief's war bonnet, with heaps of feathers in it to
show the great things he has done; yet he's hardly more than a boy.
He's a full-blooded Sioux, yet he has many of the ways and habits of
the white man. When I slowed down on Laramie Plain and went back to
slacken the lariat about his arms, I spoke to him in his own tongue.
He answered in clean-cut English. 'Thank you, stranger,' he said,
looking me full in the face as if summing me up. 'That is very much
better. And, since you are so considerate, perhaps you will allow me
to smoke a cigarette.' Naturally I decided that he was going to do
without that smoke. His six-shooter, whether loaded or empty, was too
close for me to let him have his hands free to draw it."

"Not but what you'd have been in front of him with your own," wisely
commented Gid. "He's alert, he's slick; but not the same as you are,
Kiddie."

"You appear to have had experience of him, Gid. Has he molested you
before this morning?"

"Not exactly." The stable door was now open and Gideon was patting his
restored Arab. "Not exactly. I've heard about him. He's