for his arrest."
"Isa Blagg, the sheriff, is here, right now," Gideon told him. "Isa c'd have arrested him, legal, I guess."
"Even so," resumed Kiddie, "you would soon have had another raid. The Redskins would have been here like a shot to liberate their chief and to retaliate on you for having foiled them in One Tree Gulch."
"Sure," acknowledged the Old Man, leading the way to the stable. "An' even as matters stand, I'm figurin' as Broken Feather 'll notion ter have revenge on you fer puttin' the lasso on him. He'll try ter git level with you somehow, Kiddie, sure's a steel trap. You've made him your enemy—a dangerous enemy—an' he ain't no tenderfoot in villainy. He's cunnin' as a coyote, he's unscrup'lous, an' he's clever. Real clever, he is."
Kiddie's glance was roving over the land in search of the fugitive. He was not seriously concerned at the disappearance of the Indian chief; nevertheless, his pride was hurt and he did not conceal his annoyance that his prisoner had escaped so easily.
"Yes," he responded to the Old Man's remarks. "I'd already discovered that he's not an ordinary lazy and small-minded Redskin. There's something unusual about him which I don't quite understand. He's a chief, wearing a chief's war bonnet, with heaps of feathers in it to show the great things he has done; yet he's hardly more than a boy. He's a full-blooded Sioux, yet he has many of the ways and habits of the white man. When I slowed down on Laramie Plain and went back to slacken the lariat about his arms, I spoke to him in his own tongue. He answered in clean-cut English. 'Thank you, stranger,' he said, looking me full in the face as if summing me up. 'That is very much better. And, since you are so considerate, perhaps you will allow me to smoke a cigarette.' Naturally I decided that he was going to do without that smoke. His six-shooter, whether loaded or empty, was too close for me to let him have his hands free to draw it."
"Not but what you'd have been in front of him with your own," wisely commented Gid. "He's alert, he's slick; but not the same as you are, Kiddie."
"You appear to have had experience of him, Gid. Has he molested you before this morning?"
"Not exactly." The stable door was now open and Gideon was patting his restored Arab. "Not exactly. I've heard about him. He's the son of your old-time enemy, Eye-of-the-Moon. He's a man of tremendous ambition. Thinks a heap of hisself. Notions ter become the boss war chief of the hull Sioux nation, same as Sitting Bull. Ever since his earliest youth he's held that ambition in front of him, devotin' himself to attainin' it; aimin' at excellin' in horsemanship, in military exercises, and in the knowledge of strategy. 'Fore he'd gotten outer his childhood, he'd reco'nized that the white man has many advantages over the red, an' he'd made up his mind t' acquire intimate knowledge of the ways of civilization, addin' a college eddication to the trainin' of a nat'rally sly an' crafty Injun. I'm told he attended one of the big American universities. Guess that's how he come ter speak what you calls clean-cut English. But Isa Blagg c'n tell you a heap more about Broken Feather 'n I can. Here's Isa comin' along, with Abe. They'll be glad ter see you."
While Abe and Isa were heartily welcoming the unexpected return of Kiddie, and plying him with a multitude of questions, young Rube Carter watched them from the doorway of the bunk house.
Rube was painfully bashful of this newly-arrived stranger, whom he regarded merely as a traveller passing along the Salt Lake Trail. Yet he was curiously fascinated by the man who owned such a beautiful horse and who knew his way so unerringly about Birkenshaw's camp.
The more he watched, the more the boy was perplexed.
By all appearances the stranger was a person of very great importance; and yet there were Gideon, Mr. Blagg, and Abe Harum talking and laughing with him familiarly, as if he were their intimate friend and they his equals!
Presently all four of them glanced towards the doorway where the boy was standing. Abe Harum left the little group and strode forward in advance.
"Rube," he called, "you gotter come along right now an' be interdooced ter Lord St. Olave. He's just pinin' ter know you."
"Lord Saint Olave?" repeated Rube. "Gee! that's a mouthful! A lord, is he? I was guessin' he couldn't be no real frontier scout, spite of his outfit. Say, what'm I ter call him? Have I gotter say 'your highness,' or 'your ex'lency,' or what?"
"No, nothin' ceremonious," Abe assured him. "You drop in a 'sir' now an' again, like; an' you takes off your hat when he puts out his hand. Come along!"
He drew the boy forward. Kiddie advanced. Rube took off his hat and dropped it.
"This is Rube," said Abe, and to the boy he added: "This is the Right Hon'rable the Earl of St. Olave—better known along this yer trail as Kiddie—Kiddie of Birkenshaw's—Kiddie of the Camp."
Rube drew back in astonishment.
"Kiddie?" he cried. "Oh, that's diff'rent; that's a whole lot diff'rent. Why didn't yer put me wise at first? I know th' name of Kiddie. Ought to. I've heard it often 'nough. Real proud ter see you, sir," he added, taking Kiddie's outstretched hand.
"What d'you know 'bout him, boy?" inquired Isa Blagg.
"Heaps, sheriff," returned Rube. "Best horseman on all the Salt Lake Trail, best rifle shot, best swimmer an' trapper—best all round scout this side the Rocky Mountains; never told a lie, never said a bad word, never done anythin' he was ashamed of."
Kiddie laughed outright.
"Who's been feeding you up with all that silly rot, Rube?" he asked. "If that's the reputation you judge me by I shall have a jolly hard task to live up to it."
"'Tain't a whole lot wide o' the truth, for all that, Kiddie," interposed the Boss. "But never heed it fer the present. Come right in an' have suthin' ter eat. We're all hungry."
Kiddie walked with young Rube, with a hand on the boy's shoulder.
"No, you mustn't think I'm all that, Rube," he said. "I've made many a false step, fallen into many a mistake I ought to have avoided. Only this morning, you know, I made the mistake of shoving Broken Feather into the lean-to without looking if there was a loophole for his escape."
"My fault as much as yours, sir," said Rube. "I oughter ha' fastened the trap-door."
"Well, anyhow," resumed Kiddie, "you and I are going to be good friends. You see, we have a good deal in common. You've spent your boyhood in this camp, so did I mine. Your father was an English gentleman, so was mine. Your mother is a Pawnee Indian, so was mine."
"It's a proud day fer me, sir, your comin' back here, an' me walkin' alongside o' you," faltered Rube. "An' if you're shapin' ter stay here for a while, I shall learn a lot. You c'n teach me heaps about trappin' the wild critters, an' livin' in the woods, an' scoutin'; about horses, too, an' buffaloes an' Injuns."
He paused, surprised at the length of his speech.
"Yes," nodded Kiddie. "We'll go on the trail together. We'll go trapping and fishing and shooting. You shall be my boy scout."
"But thar's one thing as I'm hankerin' to learn more'n all else, sir," Rube went on boldly. "You was sayin' right now as my father was a English gentleman. Well, 'tain't possible fer me to be that, seein' as I was born here in th' United States; but I guess thar's such a thing as a 'Merican gentleman, an' maybe you'd teach me how ter be one o' them."
Kiddie was silent for some moments as they crossed the clearing in front of
