The Talking Leaves | Page 9

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