smashing
blows. His feet were seized, then one arm. In vain he tried to tear
himself loose.

"Fine! Now throw some rope around 'em!" they heard Garvey say.

A shower of blows fell upon the Texan's head. He dropped, with a half
dozen red warriors clinging to him. It was the end!

CHAPTER XXV

BLIZZARD'S CHARGE

Kid Wolf was so dazed for a time that he but dimly realized what was
happening to him. Half stunned, he was carried, along with Dave
Robbins, out of the arroyo. He was light-headed from the blows he had
received.

That torture was in store for them, he well knew. He heard Gil
Garvey's voice calling for Yellow Skull. Red faces, smeared with war
paint, glared at him. He was being taken on a pony's back through a
thicket of brush.

They were up on the mesa again, for he felt the sun burn out and a hot
wind sweep the desert. What were they waiting for?

Yellow Skull! Kid Wolf had heard of that terrible, insane Apache
chief. He could expect about as much mercy from him as he could from
Garvey.

Some one was shaking his shoulder. It was the Lost Springs bandit
leader.

Kid Wolf looked about him. A score or more of warriors, naked save for
breechcloths, stood around in a hostile circle. Garvey was chuckling
and in high good humor. With him was Shank, sneering and cold-eyed.

"We want to know where that money is!" Garvey shouted.

Kid Wolf's brain was clearing. On the ground, a few feet away, lay
Dave Robbins, still stunned.

"I'm not sayin'," the Texan returned calmly.

Garvey's blotched face was convulsed with rage.

"Yuh'll wish yuh had, blast yuh!" he snarled. "I'm turnin' yuh both
over to Yellow Skull! He's got somethin' in store for yuh that'll make
yuh wish yuh'd never been born! Yo're west o' the Pecos now, Mr.
Wolf--and there's no law here but me!"

The Kid eyed him steadily. "Theah's no law," he said, "but justice.
And some of these times, sah, yo' will meet up with it!"

"I suppose yuh think yuh can hand it to me yoreself," leered the bandit
leader.

"I may," said Kid Wolf quietly.

Garvey laughed loudly and contemptuously.

"Yellow Skull!" he called. "Come here!"

The man who strode forward with snakelike, noiseless steps was
horrible, if ever a man was horrible. He was the chief of the renegade
Apache band, and as insane as a horse that has eaten of the loco weed.
Sixty years or more in age, his face was wrinkled in yellow folds over
his gaunt visage