up a half-smothered smoke, two or three
loose California lion-skins, thrown here and there over the rocks, a
pair of moccasins or two, a tomahawk--and that was almost all. No
cooking utensils had they--for what had they to cook? No eating
utensils--for what had they to eat?

Great gnarled and knotty trees clung to the mountain side beyond, and a
little to the left a long, thin cataract, which, from the valley far
below, looked like a snowy plume, came pitching down through the tree
tops. It had just been let loose from the hand of God--this sheen of
shining water. Back and beyond all this, a peak of snow, a great pyramid
and shining shaft of snow, with a crown of clouds, pierced heaven.

Stealthily, and on tip-toe, two armed men, both deeply disguised in
great black beards, and in good clothes, stepped into this empty little
camp. Bending low, looking right, looking left, guns in hand and hand
on trigger, they stopped in the centre of the little camp, and looked
cautiously up, down, and all around. Seeing no one, hearing nothing,
they looked in each others' eyes, straightened up, and, standing their
guns against a tree, breathed more freely in the gray twilight. Wicked,
beastly-looking men were they, as they stood there loosening their
collars, taking in their breath as if they had just had a hard climb,
and looking about cautiously; hard, cruel and cunning, they seemed as if
they partook something of the ferocity of the wild beasts that prowled
there at night.

These two large animal-looking men were armed with pistols also. But at
the belt of each hung and clanked and rattled something more terrible
than any implement of death.

These were manacles! Irons! Chains for human hands!

Did it never occur to you as a little remarkable, that man only forges
chains and manacles for his fellow-man? A cage will do for a wild beast,
cattle are put in pens, bears in a pit, but man must be chained. Men
carry these manacles with them only when they set out to take their
fellow-man. These two men were man-hunters.

Standing there, manacles in hand, half beast and half devil, they were
in the employment of the United States. They were sent to take John
Logan, Carrie and Johnny, to the Reservation--the place most hated,
dreaded, abhorred of all earthly places, the Reservation! Back of these
two men lay a deeper, a more damning motive for the capture of the girl
than the United States was really responsible for; for the girl, as