This was a brave answer, in a certain sense, but it was not a very prudent one; for Lone Wolf was known to be the possessor of a fearful temper, easily excited into a tempest of passion; and the words of the boy were not calculated to be very soothing to him. There was too much paint upon the face of the chieftain for the boy to observe the flush which overspread it at hearing himself addressed in this manner, but he could understand the lowering of that gruff voice and the quickening of the utterance. "Lone Wolf and his brave Apaches care nothing for the soldiers of the Father at Washington. His agents deceive us; they make treaties and do not keep them; they lie to us, and then we turn upon and rend them. Do you see that?" As he uttered this inquiry in the fiercest kind of language, he whipped out from beneath his blanket the reeking scalp of one of the soldiers that had fallen in the gorge a short time before, and shook it in the face of the terrified lad. The latter could not fail to see what it was, and drew back in horror and disgust, realizing what a bloodthirsty monster stood before him. He saw that it would never do to excite the other's anger, and he endeavored to turn the conversation into another channel. "Do you and your brave warriors mean to stay here till morning?" "It is as Lone Wolf wills," was the instant answer, in a voice not quite so severe, indicating a subsidence of the troubled waters. "And what are you going to do with me?" was the next question, which no one besides a lad of Ned's age would have dared to put, when placed in a similar position. "That, too, is as Lone Wolf wills," was the rather non-committal answer. "And that is the reason why I asked you. How soon can I return to my father? When I reach him I will tell him that it was Lone Wolf that sent me back and he will be friendly toward him." "Lone Wolf asks not his friendship," said the chieftain, with something of the old fire gleaming in his eye. "He has killed our bravest and best warriors. He has followed them to the mountains and slain them by their camp fires, when they dreamed not that the white man was near. He has murdered their squaws; and Lone Wolf shall not die until he tears his scalp from his head." The poor boy was horrified. He was too young to understand fully the causes of such deep enmity upon the part of the chieftain, but he was not too young to understand that his own life had been spared through no sentiment of mercy. The leader had some other cause, but Ned did not see much hope of making a favorable impression upon this intractable chief, and he would have been very much relieved had he taken himself off and left him alone.