When at length the ponies were brought to a halt, Rube was dragged to the ground and left there, lying on his back, with his cramped arms beneath him. He heard the muffled sounds of barking dogs and chattering squaws, and he judged that he had been brought into the Indians’ encampment.

Presently he was turned over and his arms were set free, the tight bandage was taken from his eyes.

He sat up and gazed about him wonderingly, with dim sight and aching forehead.

For the first time in his life he was in an Indian village, surrounded by wigwams, all of them similar to Kiddie’s teepee, only that his was cleaner and better made, and decorated with more care.

The village was pitched in the midst of a green valley, through which ran a narrow creek, bordered with willows. Horses and cattle grazed on the neighbouring slopes, and an enclosed cornfield and well-beaten trails showed that the Indians lived here permanently.

Near to where he sat were two lodges larger than the rest. They were decorated with many painted devices and trophies of the chase, and in front of each of them was a high totem pole from which grim-looking scalp locks and skulls and bones were suspended. He conjectured that one of these tents would be the chief’s wigwam and the other the Medicine Lodge.

None of the Redskins took much notice of him, passing him with a mere glance, or making a remark in a tongue which he did not understand.

A young squaw approached, carrying water. Rube signed to her, asking for a drink. She stopped and stooped to give him one. He then made further easily understood signs to show that he was very hungry. She spoke to him, but he shook his head.

“Wish you c’d speak plain English,” he said.

Then the squaw also began to talk in the sign language, and Rube gathered that she did not dare to bring food to a prisoner. Nevertheless, a little later she went past him and dropped within his reach, as if by chance, a fragment of dry buffalo meat, which he ate hungrily.

He was left alone for a long time. But he knew that he was being watched, and that it would be worse than useless for him to attempt to escape.

He saw the young Indian boys at their games of skill, or engaged in competitions with the bow and arrow, horse racing, mounting and dismounting while their bare-backed ponies were at the gallop, throwing the lariat, wrestling and running, and thus training to become braves and warriors.

At about mid-day two of the scouts who had been among his captors came up to him and signed to him to follow them. They led him across a foot-worn patch of grass towards the entrance of the Medicine Lodge, where they came to a halt, standing on guard over him.

Rube wondered what was going to happen; but, watching, he began to understand that the chief warriors and medicine men were within the lodge, and that some sort of court of justice was being held. He further gathered from the picture-writing on the lodge that these Redskins were of the Crow nation, and that the tribal name of their chief was Falling Water.

When at length he was marched into the lodge he saw the councillors seated on the floor in a half-circle round a small fire. All of them wore feathered war bonnets and had their faces painted.

Falling Water himself, a grim, wizen-featured old man, sat in the middle, smoking a tobacco pipe that was shaped like a tomahawk and adorned with coloured beads and feathers. He looked at Rube long and steadily, and then spoke to one of the scouts inquiringly.

Rube could only understand the answer by the gestures and signs that accompanied it. From these and what followed he was able to make up a coherent outline of the offence of which he was being accused.

It appeared that a picket of scouts had been out on the mountains watching for enemy spies. They had captured this one in the very act of spying upon them. He had been making signals, sending messages and answering messages by sounds made with his lips. He carried a gun, and was ready to use it upon them if they had not been too quick for them. And he was disguised. It was clear that he was an Indian-one of their Sioux enemies-who had tried to make himself look like a Paleface. Moreover, he wore the totem sign of his chief, who was the enemy of Falling Water.

Rube was perplexed in his effort to understand this part of the scout’s evidence.

He was not surprised that he had been mistaken for a full-blooded Indian. Was not his mother an Indian? And had not both he and Kiddie when they started on their camping trip dressed themselves in fringed buckskins and designedly made themselves look as much as possible like Indians?

He supposed that the scouts picketed on the heights had heard Kiddie’s whistle from afar and his own feeble attempt to respond. What puzzled him most was the spokesman’s declaration that he wore the totem sign of his chief. For so he understood the scout’s gestures.

Falling Water was apparently dissatisfied, for he closely questioned the witness, whose answer, partly in the Crow tongue and partly in pantomime, threw a flood of light upon Rube’s perplexity.

Plucking a feather from his own headdress, the scout pinched the quill and bent it over, holding it in position on Rube’s head.

This, then, was the totem sign of his supposed chief. And he, Rube Carter, was believed by these Crow Indians to be a spy of their enemy Broken Feather!

He did not know that one of the medicine men had questioned him in the tongue of the Sioux, which, if he were indeed one of Broken Feather’s tribe, he ought to have understood. His failure to answer was taken for stubbornness, a sure evidence of his guilt.

Falling Water spoke, holding up a cautioning finger to impose attention to his words. Rube guessed by his serious judicial manner that he was passing a sentence of punishment upon him.

“It’s a pity none o’ you c’n understand plain, straight-forward English,” he protested. “I c’d explain in a jiffy.”

“Eh?” cried the medicine man who had addressed him in the Sioux, “you c’n speak English yourself, can you, young ’un?”

Rube looked across at him in astonishment. Surely he was not an Indian, speaking like this! He was an old, old man with a wrinkled face, white hair, and a matted white beard and dim blue eyes. In dress and manner, however, he was very little different from his companions.

“It’s the only language that I c’n speak,” said Rube.

“Barrin’ your own,” winked the medicine man. “But you’re not the only one of your tribe that can speak English. Broken Feather himself’s a dab hand at it, so I hear. A clever scoundrel is Broken Feather. Togged you out like a Paleface and sent you into this reservation to spy around and find out how many braves and warriors we’ve got, how many war-horses we possess, and how far it’s safe for him to come out on the war-trail against us. Well, young ’un, you’re caught at it, and you’ve got to take the consequences, which is as much as to say that you’re going to be tortured to death. You asked for plain English, and now you’ve got it. Quit!”

“But you haven’t let me explain,” Rube objected hotly.

The old man closed his dim blue eyes and drew his red blanket closer about his shoulders.

“No explanations needed,” he grunted.

At a sign from the chief, the scouts dragged Rube forcibly away, and again tied his hands.

They took him into an empty teepee and there bound his legs together and mounted a guard outside so that he could not possibly escape.

No food and no drink were given to him during the rest of the long, weary, monotonous day. He watched a shaft of sunlight moving slowly across the earthen floor of the wigwam until it became a thin streak and then faded.

At dusk a new guard entered-two powerful young Indians with grotesquely painted faces. They loosened the bonds about his legs, but did so only that he might walk as they led him out into a lane broken through a dense crowd of excited braves and squaws and curious children, waiting to witness his torture.

He saw Falling Water with his medicine men and principal warriors in their full war-paint seated in a group in the midst of an open circle of the expectant people. Drums were being beaten, weird Indian songs were being chanted, braves wearing hideous masks were dancing round a blazing fire.

In the middle of the wide ring was the charred stump of a tree, and to this Rube was led. When he came closer, he saw a procession of youths march up, each carrying a large load of faggots. Following them came Indians armed with spears, scalping-knives, bows and arrows, and formidable clubs.

Rube began to feel exceedingly limp. He was trembling from head to foot, though as yet he only guessed at the ominous meaning of these preparations.

Suddenly he was seized from behind and thrust bodily towards the grim execution tree. He struggled, but was overpowered. A blow on the head made his brain reel, and all the strength of his resistance went out of him.

When he came to himself again he found that he was bound by ropes to the tree, and that flames were licking at his feet and legs, while by the light of the fire and through the mist of smoke he saw hideous figures of red men dancing round him, menacing him with their spears and knives and tomahawks.

The fire nipped his shins, the ropes were cutting into his flesh, the sparks and smoke were choking him.

“Kiddie! Kiddie!” he cried aloud in his anguish of body and mind.

And then, from immediately behind him, there came a calm, steady voice-

“All right, Rube; all right. I’m here.”

Never, never, though he should live to be a hundred, could Rube Carter forget those magical, unexpected words, coming to him as they did in the most awful moment of his young life!

He did not ask himself just then how it had been possible for Kiddie to find him and to penetrate the crowd of excited Indians unnoticed and unhindered. All that he thought of was that Kiddie was here to rescue him from the torturing death from which there had seemed to be no faintest hope of escape.

But even yet escape had not been achieved.

The rising flames were scorching his legs, the flying sparks were stinging his face and neck, the resinous smoke of the pine wood was stifling him, and the madly-gesticulating Redskins were prodding at him with their long spears and striking at him with their tomahawks to see how nearly they could hit him without yet touching him. They prolonged the process of cruelty to increase his mental suffering; but the delay gave Kiddie his chance.

“Cut the rope, Kiddie-cut the rope!” Rube cried, not knowing that Kiddie’s sharp knife had already done its work.

Hardly had he spoken, when a strong arm was flung round him, and he was lifted bodily backward beyond reach of the flames and the menacing weapons of torture. His brain reeled as the supporting arm was withdrawn; he stumbled and sank to the ground.

In his stupor he heard a wild yell from the Redskins robbed of their victim. His eyes nipped painfully, but by the light of the leaping flames he could distinguish Kiddie standing at bay above him, with a revolver in each outstretched hand swinging threateningly from side to side as the Indians made a rush towards him.

Believing that Kiddie’s life was now in imminent peril, Rube managed to scramble to his knees. He felt instinctively for his gun, forgetting that it had been taken from him.

But Kiddie was not shooting. Were his pistols empty? Rube wondered. He saw the crowd of Redskins fall back with lowered weapons and sullen looks and hoarse grunts of disappointment.

“Best put them guns out of sight now,” Rube heard some one advise. He turned and saw the English-speaking medicine man standing at Kiddie’s side. “You’ve managed all right up to now,” the same voice continued. “Boy’s not much harmed, by the look of him. You pulled him out just in time, though. Another minute and they’d have been at him like a pack of wolves. Hold hard while I go forward and explain to ’em.”

He strode off and harangued the Indians in a loud voice of command.

“Who is he, Kiddie?” Rube was curious to know. “Who and what is he?”

“A man of the name of Simon Sprott,” Kiddie told him. “Used to be a friend of Gid Birkenshaw’s years ago, when Gid was a lone trapper in Colorado.”

“Then he ain’t a Crow Injun?”

“Well, he is and he isn’t,” returned Kiddie, helping the boy to his feet. “When Gid knew him at first he was just an Englishman, come out West on a trip of adventure. Then he got mussin’ around with the Redskins, married a squaw, and took the blanket. They made him a chief, calling him Short Nose, and when he became too old to lead the braves on the war trail they made him a boss medicine-man. That’s about all I know of him. I ran up against him when I was sneakin’ into the village on your track, and it was him that put me wise about what they were doin’ to you. I guess you’d a narrow squeak, eh?”

“I just had.” Rube nodded. “But all the time I kinder felt as you’d turn up, somehow. I gotter ’normous faith in you, Kiddie. I was plumb certain you’d foller on my tracks, though I didn’t blaze no trail.”

“You blazed it quite enough for me, Rube,” Kiddie averred. “I didn’t fool around any, searchin’ for your dead body at the foot of the cliffs in Lone Wolf Canyon. The sight of the eagles in flight and, afterwards, the signs of Injuns told me all I needed to know. Say, you didn’t make an extra good witness for the defence, else you’d have made ’em understand that you weren’t the enemy spy they took you for. Pity you never mentioned the name of Gideon Birkenshaw, or of Buckskin Jack, or even of your own father. Simon Sprott would sure have tumbled to your innocence.”

“Dare say,” acknowledged Rube. “But how in thunder was I ter know as any of ’em c’d understand English? Simon Sprott never let on that he was anythin’ but a pure Injun until after I was condemned.”

“You ain’t hurt any, I hope?” Kiddie inquired.

“Nope. Shins are some scorched. Moccasins an’ leggin’s are spoilt, an’ my eyes are nippin’. Oh, an’ they’ve took my six-shooter, Kiddie. D’you reckon we c’n get it back?”

“Very likely,” said Kiddie. “I’ll ask Si Sprott. Here he is comin’ back.”