The hide in which he had disguised himself lay piled up where it had been flung. Beside it were a bow and several arrows. The latter were crimsoned to the notch, the feathers steeped in blood and clinging to the shafts. They had pierced the huge bodies of the animals, passing through and through. Each arrow had taken many lives! The old trapper rode up to the corpse, and leisurely dismounted from his mare. "Fifty dollar a plew!" he muttered, unsheathing his knife and stooping over the body. "It's more'n I got for my own. It beats beaver all hollow. Cuss beaver, say this child. Plew a plug--ain't worth trappin' if the varmint wur as thick as grass-jumpers in calf-time. 'Ee up, niggur," he continued, grasping the long hair of the savage, and holding the face upward; "let's get a squint of your phisog. Hooraw! Coyote 'Pash! Hooraw!" And a gleam of triumph lit up the countenance of the old man as he uttered these wild exclamations. "Apash, is he?" asked one of the hunters, who had remained near the spot. "That he are, Coyote 'Pash, the very niggurs that bobtailed this child's ears. I kin swar to thur ugly picters anywhur I get my peepers upon 'em. Wouwough--ole woofy! got 'ee at last, has he! Yur a beauty, an' no mistake." So saying, he gathered the long crown locks in his left hand, and with two slashes of his knife, held quarte and tierce, he cut a circle around the top of the head, as perfect as if it had been traced by compasses. He then took a turn of the hair over his wrist, giving it a quick jerk outward. At the same instant, the keen blade passed under the skin, and the scalp was taken! "Counts six," he continued, muttering to himself while placing the scalp in his belt; "six at fifty--three hunder shiners for 'Pash har; cuss beaver trappin'! says I." Having secured the bleeding trophy, he wiped his knife upon the hair of one of the buffaloes, and proceeded to cut a small notch in the woodwork of his gun, alongside five others that had been carved there already. These six notches stood for Apaches only; for as my eye wandered along the outlines of the piece, I saw that there were many other columns in that terrible register! CHAPTER THIRTY TWO. ANOTHER "COUP." A shot ringing in my ears caused me to withdraw my attention from the proceedings of the earless trapper. As I turned I saw a blue cloud floating away over the prairie, but I could not tell at what the shot had been fired. Thirty or forty of the hunters had surrounded the motte, and, halted, were sitting in their saddles in a kind of irregular circle. They were still at some distance from the timber, as if keeping out of arrow-range. They held their guns crosswise, and were shouting to one another.