The Talking Leaves. William O. Stoddard

that day, and through which the Apaches before them had driven their long lines of ponies, loaded with buffalo-meat and all the baggage of an Indian hunting-camp, was really a wide strip of very rough country, full of mountains and rising to a high range in the centre. The Lipans were not very well acquainted with it, except by what they had heard from others, and there had been some murmuring among them at first, when their leader announced his intention of following his "war-path" to the other side of such a barrier as that.

      His speech had settled it all, however, and his warriors were ready to go with him no matter where he should lead them. Anything rather than go back empty-handed to be laughed at.

      The moment luncheon was over every man was on horseback. It was absolutely necessary to find "grass" before night, if their horses were to be good for anything the next day.

      They knew that the particular band of Apaches they were pursuing must be two or three days' march ahead of them; but they also knew that every mountain range has its deep, green valleys, and that the trail left by their enemies would surely lead through the best of these.

      Up, up, up, through rugged ravines and gorges for nearly an hour, and then down again almost as far, and then, sooner than they had expected, they came upon the very thing they were looking for. It was not so large or so beautiful a valley as the one in which Many Bears and his men were encamped, miles and miles beyond. It did not widen like that at its lower end into a broad and undulating plain, with a river and a forest far away; but there was plenty of grass in it for tired and hungry horses, and To-la-go-to-de at once decided that there they should halt for the night.

      It was little beyond the middle of the afternoon, and a war-party of Lipans has neither tents to pitch nor much baggage to care for. Little time was lost in mere "going into camp," and even before that was done every fifth brave was ordered out to look for game. Not only would fresh meat be better than dry, if they could get any, but it would save their somewhat slender stock of provisions for another day.

      "Steve! Steve Harrison!"

      "What is it, Murray?"

      "I've spoken to old Two Knives. You and I are to hunt."

      "Hurrah for that! Which way are you going?"

      "Most of the others seem to be setting out southerly. I guess they're right, so far as game is concerned. You and I'll try that gap to the north-west. There's no telling where it may lead to."

      The "gap" he pointed at was a sombre-looking chasm, the mouth of which opened into the little valley where they were, at a distance of about half a mile.

      Nobody could tell, indeed, where it might lead to, nor could any one have guessed, until he was actually in it, what a very remarkable gap it was.

      The two white hunters, little as they looked like white men, had chosen to go on foot, and not one of their Lipan friends had accompanied them. If they were men to be "watched" at any other time, even the sharp eyes of Indian suspicion saw no need for it among the desolate solitudes of those "sierras."

      They did not hear To-la-go-to-de say to some of the red hunters:

      "No Tongue great hunter. Bring in more antelope than anybody else. Yellow Head good, too. You beat them? Ugh!"

      They would try beyond doubt, but more than one Lipan shook his head. The reputation of Murray as a slayer of game was too high to be questioned, and he had taught Steve Harrison like a father.

      "Murray," said Steve, "do you mean that such a gap as that offers me a chance?"

      "To get away?"

      "Yes. That's what I'm thinking of."

      "Can't say about that, my boy. Probably not. I don't believe it comes out on the western slope of the mountains."

      "What do you want to try it for, then?"

      "I don't exactly know. Game, perhaps. Then I want to teach you something more about mountains and finding your way among them. More than that, I don't want to go the same way with any of the rest."

      "I like that, anyhow. Seems as if I had ever so many questions to ask that I never felt like asking before."

      "I never cared to answer any, Steve, when you did ask 'em. Not so long as you and I were to be together. Now you're going away from me, pretty soon, I don't mind telling some things."

      "Going away? Do you mean to say you won't go too? Shall you stay and be a Lipan?"

      "You'll go alone, Steve, when you go. That's all."

      "Why won't you go with me?"

      "That's one of the questions I don't mean to answer. You've told me all about your family and people. I'll know where to look for you if I ever come out into the settlements."

      "I wish you'd come. You're a white man. You're not a Mexican either. You're American."

      "No, I'm not."

      "Not an American?"

      "No, Steve, I'm an Englishman. I never told you that before. One reason I don't want to go back is the very thing that sent me down into Mexico to settle years and years ago."

      "I didn't ask about that."

      "No good if you did."

      "But you've been a sort of father to me ever since you bought me from the Lipans, after they cleaned out my uncle's hunting-party, and I can't bear the thought of leaving you here."

      If it had not been for his war-paint, and its contrast with his Saxon hair and eyes, Steve would have been a handsome, pleasant-looking boy—tall and strong for his years, but still a good deal of a boy—and his voice was now trembling in a very un-Indian sort of way. No true Lipan would have dreamed of betraying any emotion at parting from even so good a friend as Murray.

      "Yes," said the latter, dryly, "they cleaned out the hunting-party. Your uncle and his men must have run pretty well, for not one of them lost his scalp or drew a bead on a Lipan. That's one reason they didn't knock you on the head. They came home laughing, and sold you to me for six ponies and a pipe."

      "I never blamed my uncle. I've always wondered, though, what sort of a story he told my father and mother."

      "Guess he doesn't amount to a great deal."

      "He's rich enough, and he's fond of hunting, but there isn't a great deal of fight in him. He wouldn't make a good Lipan."

      The circumstances of Steve's capture were evidently not very creditable to some of those who were concerned in it, and Murray's tone, in speaking of the "uncle" who had brought him out into the Texas plains to lose him so easily, was bitterly contemptuous.

      At that moment they were entering the mouth of the gap, and Murray suddenly dropped all other subjects to exclaim,

      "We've struck it, Steve!"

      "Struck what?"

      "A regular cañon. See, the walls are almost perpendicular, and the bottom comes down, from ledge to ledge, like a flight of stairs!"

      Steve had been among mountains before, but he had never seen anything precisely like that.

      In some places the vast chasm before him was hardly more than a hundred feet wide, while its walls of gray granite and glittering white quartz rock arose in varying heights of from three hundred to five hundred feet.

      "Come on, Steve!"

      "You won't find any game in here. A rabbit couldn't get enough to live on among such rocks as these."

      "Come right along! I want to get a look at the ledges up there. There's no telling what we may stumble upon."

      Steve's young eyes were fully occupied, as they pushed forward, with the strange beauty and grandeur of the scenery above, beyond, and behind him. The air was clear and almost cool, and there was plenty of light in the shadiest nooks of the chasm.

      "What torrents of water must pour down through