. They crowded around
him, uttering cries that he knew must be taunts or jeers. Then they
began to push and pull him and to snatch at his hair. Finally an old
squaw thrust a splinter clean through his coat and into his arm. The
pain was exquisite, but, turning, he took her chin firmly in one hand
and with the other slapped her cheeks so severely that she would have
fallen to the ground if it had not been for the detaining grasp on her
chin.

The crowd, with the instinct for the rough that dwells in all primitive
breasts, roared with laughter, and Will knew that his bold act had
brought him a certain measure of public favor. Heraka with a sharp word
or two sent all the women and children flying, and then said in tones of
great gravity to Will:

"Here you are to remain a prisoner, the prisoner of all the village,
until we choose your fate. You will stay in a tepee with Inmutanka, but
everybody will watch you, the men, the women, the girls and the boys.
Nothing that you do can escape their notice, and you will not have the
slightest chance of flight."

"If I am to be anybody's guest," said Will, "I'd choose to be old Dr.
Inmutanka's. He has a soul in his body."

"You are not a guest, you are a slave," said Heraka.

Will did not appreciate the full significance of his words then, because
Inmutanka was showing the way to one of the smaller tepees and he
entered it, finding it clean and commodious. The ground was covered
with bark, over which furs and skins were spread and there was a place
in the center for a fire, the smoke to ascend through a triangular
opening in the top, where it was regulated by a wing worked from the
outside.

Inmutanka, who undoubtedly had a kind heart, pointed to a heap of
buffalo robes in the corner, and Will threw himself upon them. All the
enormous exhaustion of such a tremendous journey suddenly became
cumulative and he slept until Inmutanka awoke him a full fifteen hours
later. Then he discovered that the old Indian really knew a little
English, though he had hidden the fact before.

"You eat," he said, and gave him fish, venison and some bread of Indian
corn, which Will ate with the huge appetite of the young and strong.

"Now you work," said Inmutanka, when he had finished.

Will stared at him, and then he remembered Heraka's words of the day
before that he was a slave. He was assailed by a sickening sensation but
he pulled himself together bravely, and, having become a wise youth,