"Well, don't I _do_ 'em?" he demanded. "What did I ever say I'd do that I didn't make good, in the end? Don't you think I'm going to get this bad _hombre_--this feller that's following me through the hills? Well, I'll tell you what I'll do. If I don't bring you his hair inside of a month--you can have my mine and everything. But I'm going to _git_ him, see? I'm going to toll him across the Valley, where he'll have to come out into the open, and when I ketch him I'm going to scalp him. He's nothing but a low-down, murdering assassin that old Eells or somebody has hired----" "Oh, _please_!" she protested and his eyes opened big before they closed down in a sudden scowl. "Well, I'll show you," he said and packed and rode off in silence. CHAPTER XX THE WAR EAGLE Since a bullet from nowhere had shot him through the leg, Wunpost had learned a new fear of the hills. Before, they had been his stamping-ground, the "high places" he was so boastful of; but now they became imbued with a malign personality, all the more fearful because it was unknown. With painstaking care he had checked up on Pisen-face Lynch, to determine if it was he who had ambushed him; but Lynch had established a perfect alibi--in fact, it was almost too good. He had been right in Blackwater during all the trouble, although now he was out in the hills; and an Indian whom Wunpost had sent on a scout reported that the Shoshones had no knowledge of the shooting. They, too, had become aware of the strange presence in the hills, though none of them had really seen it, and their women were afraid to go out after the piñon-nuts for fear of being caught and stolen. The prowler was no renegade Shoshone, for his kinsmen would know about him, and yet Wunpost had a feeling it was an Indian. And he had another hunch--that the Indian was employed by Eels and Pisen-face Lynch. For, despite Wilhelmina's statement, there was one man in Blackwater who did not consider him a bag of hot air. Judson Eells took him seriously, so seriously, in fact, that he was spending thousands of dollars on detectives; and Wunpost knew for a certainty that there was a party in the hills, waiting and watching to trail him to his mine. His departure from Los Angeles had been promptly reported, and Lynch and several others had left town--which was yet another reason why Wunpost quit the hills and went north over the Death Valley Trail.