Sid’s eyes sparkled with the intensity of his feeling. He forgot for the time that he was a prisoner of a hostile tribe, in a desolate, barren region, far from white habitation. The burning sense of the injustice of even the best of us toward the Indian swept him away. He spoke out his convictions, as ardently as ever he had championed the Indian’s soul before those white professors who had come to study them here in the southwest--and had misunderstood. The Apache’s eyes softened at the youth’s vehemence. “My son seems to comprehend something of us. It’s astonishing--rare, in one of your race! I lived long among the whites--once,” he smiled sardonically. “The massacre of my people at Apache Cave, what think you of that?” he asked. Sid realized that his attitude toward the whole Indian problem was being tested out by this wily chief; that upon his answer depended his life. Yet he simply replied out of his own convictions, with no thought of how it might affect his fate. “A pitiable business, chief!” he answered. “Men, women, children, all shot down to the last one! I suppose it _had_ to be, since you would not surrender. The Army had its orders, you know.” “Orders!” The chief drew himself up proudly. “The Apaches _never_ surrender, to injustice!” he exclaimed. “I am Honanta, son of that Chief Chuntz who fell in that fight, white man!” Sid glanced up at him, surprised. “I always understood that not one Apache escaped alive from that cave----” he began, wonderingly. “No! Let me tell you. There was _one_ humane officer among the white soldiers who entered that cave of death, after all was over. He came upon my mother, lying among the heaps of slain. She still lived, shot in three places. She held me, an infant, protectingly hid in her arms. A soldier raised his gun to end her life--a wounded squaw would be a mere nuisance, you know!”--the chief interjected with bitter sarcasm--“but that officer struck up his rifle. He had them take my mother to the ambulances. And, out of the kindness of his heart, that she might not die of starvation, he gave her--this.” Honanta raised his hand again to the gold piece. A curious sensation of excitement went through and through Sid. His own father, Colonel Colvin, had been a young second lieutenant of cavalry in that fatal fight of Apache Cave. But he had never mentioned the squaw who had survived, nor the twenty-dollar gold piece; in fact he had always been most reticent about that battle, regarding the whole subject with the most extreme distaste. Sid felt that even if Colonel Colvin _were_ that humane officer, to attempt to establish his own relationship with him and so gain immunity would be regarded by this crafty chief as mere opportunism. “The officer’s name, did she ever learn it?” he contented himself with asking.