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e nor Murray made any remarks about it. They were too much absorbed in looking along their rifle-barrels to do any talking. Both reports came together, almost like one. They were not followed by any spring from the cougar. Only by a growl and an angry tearing at the gravel, and then there was no danger that any more big-horns, living or dead, would ever be stolen by that panther. "Well, Steve, if this isn't the biggest kind of sport! Never saw anything better in all my life." "A buck, a big-horn, and a painter before sundown!" "It'll be sundown before we get them all in. We'd better start for some ponies and some help. Tell you what, Steve, I don't care much for it myself, but the Lipans would rather eat that cougar than the best venison ever was killed." "I suppose they would; but I ain't quite Indian enough for that, war-paint or no war-paint." So, indeed, it proved; and To-la-go-to-de indulged in more than one sarcastic gibe at his less successful hunters over the manner in which they had been beaten by "No Tongue and the Yellow Head--an old pale-face and a boy." He even went so far as to say to Steve Harrison, "Good shot. The Yellow Head will be a chief some day. He must kill many Apaches. Ugh!" CHAPTER VII When Steve Harrison and his friend left the ruins of the ancient town behind them, they had good reason to suppose that they were going away from a complete solitude--a place where even wild Indians did not very often come. It looked desolate enough with its scattered enclosures of rough stone, not one of them with any roof on, or any sign that people had lived in them for a hundred years at least. The windows in the tumbling walls had probably never had either sash or glass in them, and the furniture, whatever it may have been, used by the people who built the village had long since disappeared. It could never have been a very large or populous town, but it could hardly at any time have had a wilder-looking set of inhabitants than were the party of men who drew near it at about the time when Steve and Murray were killing their cougar. Two tilted wagons, a good deal the worse for wear, apparently pretty heavily laden, and drawn by six mules each, were accompanied by about two dozen men on horseback. Their portraits would have made the fortune of any picture-gallery in the world. Everybody would have gone to look at such a collection of bearded desperadoes. They wer
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