Jimmie was not granted much space for staring back into that one blue eye. He was slapped upon the shoulder, “Aqui (Here)!” grunted the chief, in Spanish, and strode on through the circle. So Jimmie followed, hobbling at best speed. The chief went straight to a scrub-oak tree, with a hut beneath it, and an Apache sitting in the shade of it, on a deer hide before the hut. By the manner with which Jimmie’s Apache spoke to the sitting Apache, who did not rise, it was plain to be seen that the sitting Apache was the principal chief, and that Jimmie’s Apache was maybe only a captain. They talked for a moment in Apache, too fast for Jimmie to understand. Then the sitting chief, who had been eying Jimmie sharply, addressed him in simple Mexican-Spanish easy to catch. He was not at all a bad-looking Apache. In fact, he was about the finest Apache that Jimmie had ever met: a broad-chested six-footer, like the captain chief, but large eyed and kindly faced and dignified. “What is your name?” “James Dunn.” “No Mexicano?” “Americano,” corrected Jimmie proudly. “Your father Pete Keetchen?” “No.” “Where you live?” “Camp Grant.” “With soldiers?” Jimmie reflected an instant. If he said “With Joe Felmer,” then the chief would surely hold him as a great prize, for Joe Felmer, Government scout as well as post blacksmith, was an important enemy. So―――― “Sometimes,” asserted Jimmie, which was true. “Why on Keetchen rancho?” “Tend to sheep.” And Jimmie blushed when he recalled that he had been a great sheep-herder! “Pete Keetchen your father?” “No!” repeated Jimmie. “No father, no mother.” The head chief and the captain chief gazed at him as though they would read his very thoughts. The captain chief had such piercing dark eyes that they bored clear through. But he was a sure-enough Apache, with straight black hair and dark chocolate skin, darker even than ordinary. ’Twas to be imagined that neither of the chiefs believed Jimmie’s statements. They still suspected that he belonged to Pete Kitchen. The head chief spoke abruptly. “You ’Pache now. Ugashé (U-gah-shay)――go!” Jimmie knew that he was dismissed, and he turned away. He was faint in the stomach and weak in the knees, and he had no place in particular to go, until he saw the Mexican boy captive sitting in the sun, with his feet under him and his shanks high. Jimmie seized upon the opportunity to talk with him, at last. “What is your name?” he asked, squatting beside him. All Americans in southern Arizona could speak some Spanish; Mexican-Spanish was as common as English. “Maria Jilda Grijalba (Maree-ah Heel-dah Gree-hal-bah).” “Where did you live?” “In Sonora” (which was in Mexico). “Where did you live?” “Camp Grant――American fort, Arizona.” “How far?” Jimmie shrugged his shoulders. “Do not know.” “You do not live on the rancho?” “For little while.” “You have father, mother?” “No. Apaches kill them.”