"You woz saying," said the farmer, with slow, matter of fact, New
England deliberation, "ez how you guessed you woz beguiled amongst the
Injins by your Mexican partner, a pow'ful influential man, and yet you
woz the only one escaped the gen'ral slarterin'. How came the Injins to
kill HIM,--their friend?"

"They didn't," returned Jim, with ominously averted eyes.

"What became of him?" continued the farmer.

Red Jim shadowed his eyes with his hand, and cast a dark glance of
scrutiny out of the doors and windows. The young girl perceived it with
timid, fascinated concern, and said hurriedly:--

"Don't ask him, father! Don't you see he mustn't tell?"

"Not when spies may be hangin' round, and doggin' me at every step,"
said Red Jim, as if reflecting, with another furtive glance towards
the already fading prospect without. "They've sworn to revenge him," he
added moodily.

A momentary silence followed. The farmer coughed slightly, and looked
dubiously at his wife. But the two women had already exchanged feminine
glances of sympathy for this evident slayer of traitors, and were
apparently inclined to stop any adverse criticism.

In the midst of which a shout was heard from the road. The farmer and
his family instinctively started. Red Jim alone remained unmoved,--a
fact which did not lessen the admiration of his feminine audience. The