at the news-stand when you want to
catch a train. Bill and me figured that Ebenezer would melt down for a
ransom of two thousand dollars to a cent. But wait till I tell you.

About two miles from Summit was a little mountain, covered with a dense
cedar brake. On the rear elevation of this mountain was a cave. There we
stored provisions.

One evening after sundown, we drove in a buggy past old Dorset's house.
The kid was in the street, throwing rocks at a kitten on the opposite
fence.

"Hey, little boy!" says Bill, "would you like to have a bag of candy and
a nice ride?"

The boy catches Bill neatly in the eye with a piece of brick.

"That will cost the old man an extra five hundred dollars," says Bill,
climbing over the wheel.

That boy put up a fight like a welter-weight cinnamon bear; but, at
last, we got him down in the bottom of the buggy and drove away. We took
him up to the cave, and I hitched the horse in the cedar brake. After
dark I drove the buggy to the little village, three miles away, where we
had hired it, and walked back to the mountain.

Bill was pasting court-plaster over the scratches and bruises on his
features. There was a fire burning behind the big rock at the entrance
of the cave, and the boy was watching a pot of boiling coffee, with two
buzzard tail-feathers stuck in his red hair. He points a stick at me
when I come up, and says:

"Ha! cursed paleface, do you dare to enter the camp of Red Chief, the
terror of the plains?"

"He's all right now," says Bill, rolling up his trousers and examining
some bruises on his shins. "We're playing Indian. We're making Buffalo
Bill's show look like magic-lantern views of Palestine in the town hall.
I'm Old Hank, the Trapper, Red Chief's captive, and I'm to be scalped at
daybreak. By Geronimo! that kid can kick hard."

Yes, sir, that boy seemed to be having the time of his life. The fun of
camping out in a cave had made him forget that he was a captive himself.
He immediately christened me Snake-eye, the Spy, and announced that,
when his braves returned from the warpath, I was to be broiled at the
stake at the rising of the sun.

Then we had supper; and he filled his mouth full of bacon and bread and
gravy, and began to talk. He made a during-dinner speech something like
this:

"I like this fine. I never camped out before; but I had a pet 'possum
once, and I was nine last birthday. I hate to go to school. Rats ate up
sixteen of Jimmy Talbot's a