Injun and Whitey to the Rescue

st

iving-room of the ranch house, a room with a great stone fireplace, the stone for which had been carted down from the mountains; with walls decorated with Indian trophies-tomahawks, bows and arrows, stone pipes and hatchets, kniv

times revealed in a light curtain of haze, at which a fellow could gaze and imagine he saw the squaws of the s

worked his way through a Western college, spurred on by the hope of bettering his people, the Dakotas, and he had bettered them. And when Mr

put to some practical use, but arithmetic seemed rather useless, and when it came to the "higher branches," geometry and trigonometry,

ne. John Big Moose represented his tribe's interest in this mine, and he was to go and inspect operations. The ore was to come down from the mountain

way. He compromised on a half-holiday for them; study in the morning, freedom in the afternoon. So that morning they stuck to their lessons. With

se of honor. He had faults, as most of us have, but breaking p

And on a grassy hill that commanded a widespread view of the plains, they looked far off over the prairie. And winding across it, clear off

h Whitey in the ranch house. Time passed and still the men did not return. Evidently they were celebrating the shipment of the mine's first output, or waiting to see it put

ng soundly and dreamlessly, when he was aroused by

e come,"

and the others,

y one man," I

something on his mind, or he wouldn't have waked him, and he waited for his friend

jun, and he wen

er down by the horse corral. As the boys watched, a man came out of the bunk

, "I thought he was lam

ell," Inju

joined that at the bunk house, and the

ey. "I thought he was wit

" Injun grunte

ng enacted before them, t

, it was remarkable that the slight sound outside-the thudding of a horse's hoofs on soft ground, or the letting down of the bars of the corral-should have wakened Injun. It probably was not the sound so much as the

o something,"

grunte

her man who was fat. It undoubtedly was Ham. Each man carried a

ne and into the window. The hour must have been late, for the moon was low. Whi

s walked as well as any one. I'll bet he wasn't hu

uttered

olen something,"

me hear 'em," said Injun. "In

o cook, the only other man on the p

ey, who shoved his feet into a pair of

y groped for matches and, finding one, lighted a lamp. Slim was nowhere to be seen. Whitey

killed Slim!"

" Injun

his fore paws on its edge, he was gazing into it, his head on one side and a very puzzled expression on his face. Bull rarely barked, except to express great joy, and he never

the upper blankets, and Slim was brought to view. Not only was Slim bound and gagged, but a coat was tied around h

g and the gag, and Whitey eagerly asked what had

ceptin' to me," he gurgled. "Gimme

ty succeeded in releasing him. Whitey asked a hundred questions meanwhile, none of which Slim answered.

mah misery, fine!

een able to learn, a "miser

despairing of getting him to t

awhide rope, too, dat jest eat into mah flesh." And Slim

you?" Whit

rapped round mah haid, an' dat dere rope bein' twisted round mah body, till it cuts mah ahms a

hear anything?"

' heard a elephant c

g Beans and Ham just r

ied. He hastily fumbled under the bedclothes, and brought to light an enormous, old-fashioned silver watch. Th

that the absent men were bent on mischief. Bill and the other cowboys were surely making a night of it at the Junction, in celebration of the gold shipme

o be done. You might as well g

t sleep in Mistah

id Whitey, as he left the bu

one to think ill of people, Whitey always had believed that String and Ham were queer, and the affairs of the night seemed to point to the truth of this. If Whitey could learn what sort of mischief the men were up to, it would be a feather

ey reviewed what took place the night he overhea

Injun, "and about meeting on a certain da

Moose had told him the day in September on which the ore

talk began to come to Whitey's mind, and to have meaning. "They were to meet on that date, and they did. That

othin'," Inj

ilroad; toward the water tank, where all the trains stop. I believe they