'I wonder, now, what that stick were worth? A blanket or a beaver-skin, you bet,' whispered Dick; 'or, may be, it's scalps they're playing for!' 'I don't understand the game,' answered Frank in the same low murmur. 'Oh, it's simple enough. That handsome old friend of ours has got a piece of bone in one of his hands. They've got to tell him in which hand it is. If they are right, he pays. If not, they do,' replied Dick. 'They'd go on at that game until this time to-morrow if we let them,' he added; 'but I guess we'll rise the winners this journey.' 'Now,' he whispered after a pause, 'you just be here and cover those Crows with your Winchesters. You, Snap, draw a bead on a spot about halfway between Buck Rabbit's shoulders, and you, Frank, cover that old villain with a little tuft of hair on his chin and only one eye. That's Teeveevex, the medicine-man, and the biggest scoundrel in the whole lot. If one moves before you hear me speak, fire and keep shooting as long as an Indian is left to shoot at.' This last sentence the old man hissed out with an energy which impressed his hearers, and before it was well finished he had gone again. The boys could hear their hearts beat, and the only wonder to them was that the Indians could not hear them too, so loudly they seemed to thump against their ribs. This time, it seemed, Teeveevex had been too many for old Buck Rabbit. His long, skinny claws clutched the chief's wrist like a vice, and when his palm was turned up the little ivory disc gleamed in it. All the shiny, evil-looking heads were bent together, when a voice rang out clear and hard in the stillness, 'Hands up! the man who moves dies!' [Illustration: 'HANDS UP!'] The boys were as much startled as the Redskins. Looking up they saw the Indians sullenly and in silence lift their hands above their heads, red statues of wrath glaring fiercely but helplessly at a tall, rigid figure in the moonlight, standing between them and their rifles, its right arm raised, its vigilant eyes noting their every breath, and in its ready right hand a revolver, on which the moonlight rested cold and chill. That little weapon held the lives of six men. If one dared to move, that one died before he could draw another breath. They knew that. At ten yards old Dick Wharton could not miss. How they must have cursed the madness which had riveted their eyes on that glancing bone whilst this avenger stole between them and their weapons! If all rose and dashed at him he would not have time to kill more than one or two, but then he who led that movement must die, and, even so, would the others back him up? It was a hard question. No one was ready to make that first move and pay the price, and so, as men always do when 'put up' by a resolute man who 'has the drop upon them,' they sat still. 'Boys,' said the voice again, 'you can git up now and take these here rifles from behind me. Look sharp.'