r less flat; the roof had a slight slope. In the
middle of the tiny attic thus formed Buddy managed to worm his body
through a hole in the gable next to the creek.

He wriggled back to the end next the cabin and lay there very flat and
very quiet, peeping out through a half-inch crack, too wise in the ways
of silence to hold his breath until he must heave a sigh to relieve
his lungs. It was hard to breathe naturally and easily after that swift
dash, but somehow he did it. An Indian had swerved and ridden behind the
cabin, and was leaning and peering in all directions to see if anyone
had remained. Perhaps he suspected an ambush; Buddy was absolutely
certain that the fellow was looking for him, personally, and that he had
seen, Buddy run toward the creek.

It was not a pleasant thought, and the fact that he knew that buck
Indian by name, and had once traded him a jackknife for a beautifully
tanned wolf skin for his mother, did not make it pleasanter.
Hides-the-face would not let past friendliness stand in the way of a
killing.

Presently Hides-the-face dismounted and tied his horse to a corner log
of the cabin, and went inside with the others to see what he could find
that could be eaten or carried off. Buddy saw fresh smoke issue from the
stone chimney, and guessed that Step-and-a-Half had left something that
could be cooked. It became evident, in the course of an hour or so, that
his presence was absolutely unsuspected, and Buddy began to watch them
more composedly, silently promising especial forms of punishment to this
one and that one whom he knew. Most of them had been to the ranch many
times, and he could have called to a dozen of them by name. They had sat
in his father's cabin or stood immobile just within the door, and had
listened while his mother played and sang for them. She had fed them
cakes--Buddy remembered the good things which mother had given these
despicable ones who were looting and gobbling and destroying like a
drove of hogs turned loose in a garden, and the thought of her wasted
kindness turned him sick with rage. Mother had believed in their
friendliness. Buddy wished that mother could see them setting fire
to the low, log stable and the corral, and swarming in and out of the
cabin.

Painted for war they were, with red stripes across their foreheads,
ribs outlined in red which, when they loosened their blankets as the
sun warmed them, gave them a fantastic likeness to the skeletons Buddy
wi