The adventurer turned in amazement. He saw what was a villainous countenance at the best of times, and now with the shaggy beard matted with saliva and gouts of blood, it was hideous and horrible in the extreme. He recognised the man he had felled in the liquor saloon at Henniker City--Bitter Rube. "How in thunder did you get into this hobble?" he said. "It's this way, Colonel. The red devils jumped us at our _placer_. They scalped the other three." "Burntwood Creek?" "That's it, Colonel. You get me out of this, and I'll make you a rich man for life. There's gold there worth millions and millions." "Glad to hear it, Bitter Rube," was the unconcerned reply. "I know the place all right; going to work it by and by. It's where your mate jumped me and got laid out for his pains. Remember your scheme to lynch me, eh, Bitter Rube?" "Oh, Lord, Colonel. It was the other chaps. See here now--" "Well, I can't even repay the little service you were going to render me--a short shrift and a long rope," interrupted Vipan, the scowling glances and increasing murmurs of the throng convincing him of the peril he himself was incurring. A frantic yell burst from the prisoner. "You snake-spawned white Injun! Here's a white man being cut into chunks before your eyes. I'll haunt yer! I'll ghost yer! I'll make life a hell to yer!" The miserable wretch went on to bellow the most frantic blasphemies. One of the young Indians, stepping up behind him, thrust a red-hot faggot into his open mouth. This was greeted as an excellent joke by the onlookers, who shouted and screamed with laughter. Then one of them applied a light to the victim's unkempt and shaggy beard. It frizzled and flared up, burning the wretched man frightfully about the face and head. The mirth of the spectators became well-nigh uncontrollable. "How! white brudder," said a burly buck, grinning hideously into Geoffry's face, and patting him fraternally on the shoulder. "Injun brudder hab heap fun. Injun brudder not hurt you first. Other man hurt first--you see him--you hab heap good fun. You hurt first, you no laugh--other hurt first, you plenty laugh--Injun brudder plenty laugh. How--how!" Then the wretched Geoffry understood that with a diabolical refinement of cruelty the savages intended that he should witness the torture and death of his companion in adversity before his own turn came. He could only raise his eyes stupidly to the grinning countenance of his addresser. Two squaws now stepped forward--hideous hags whose long flattened breasts fell in disgusting flaps below their waists. They were nearly naked, and each held in her hand a sharp knife. Advancing to the sufferer they made an incision down each of his sides, and proceeded to skin him alive as coolly as a butcher would flay a dead sheep.