Dave put
matters into shipshape, piled wood in the dugout, cooked a quantity of
food and put it where Will could reach it without rising, and fetched
several days' supply of water. Mother, ever mindful of Will's education,
had put some school-books in the wagon, and Dave placed these beside the
food and water. When Phillips finally set out, driving the surviving ox
before him, he left behind a very lonely and homesick boy.

During the first day of his confinement Will felt too desolate to eat,
much less to read; but as he grew accustomed to solitude he derived real
pleasure from the companionship of books. Perhaps in all his life he
never extracted so much benefit from study as during that brief period
of enforced idleness, when it was his sole means of making the dragging
hours endurable. Dave, he knew, could not return in less than twenty
days, and one daily task, never neglected, was to cut a notch in the
stick that marked the humdrum passage of the days. Within the week he
could hobble about on his crutches for a short distance; after that he
felt more secure.

A fortnight passed. And one day, weary with his studies, he fell asleep
over his books. Some one touched his shoulder, and looking up, he saw an
Indian in war paint and feathers.

"How?" said Will, with a show of friendliness, though he knew the brave
was on the war-path.

Half a score of bucks followed at the heels of the first, squeezing into
the little dugout until there was barely room for them to sit down.

With a sinking heart Will watched them enter, but he plucked up
spirit again when the last, a chief, pushed in, for in this warrior he
recognized an Indian that he had once done a good turn.

Whatever Lo's faults, he never forgets a kindness any more than he
forgets an injury. The chief, who went by the name of Rain-in-the-Face,
at once recognized Will, and asked him what he was doing in that place.
Will displayed his bandages, and related the mishap that had made them
necessary, and refreshed the chief's memory of a certain occasion when
a blanket and provisions had drifted his way. Rain-in-the-Face replied,
with proper gravity, that he and his chums were out after scalps, and
confessed to designs upon Will's, but in consideration of Auld Lang Syne
he would spare the paleface boy.

Auld Lang Syne, however, did not save the blankets and provisions, and
the bedizened crew stripped the dugout almost bare of supplies; but Will
was thankful enoug