Page:The Boy Land Boomer.djvu/47

Rh he moans. 'Don't say that—it's an awful crime! Don't put the blood on my head!' an a lot more like thet, till my blood most run cold an I shook him ter make him wake up. Now, don't thet look like he had something on his mind?"

"It certainly does, and yet the man is not quite right in his upper story, although I wouldn't tell the son that, Rasco: But what was the name he mentioned?"

"Bolange, or Volange, or something like thet. It seems ter me he hollered out Louis onct, too."

A sudden light shone in the great scout's eyes. He gripped his companion by the arm.

"Try to think, Jack. Did Arbuckle speak the name of Vorlange—Louis Vorlange?"

"By gosh! Pawnee, you hev struck it—Vorlange, ez plain ez day. Do yer know the man?"

"Do I know him?" Pawnee Brown drew a long breath. "Jack, I believe I once told you about my schoolboy days at Wellington and elsewhere before I left home to take up a life on the cattle trails?"

"Yes, Pawnee. From all accounts you wuz cut out for a schoolmaster, instead of a leader of us boomers."

"I was a professor once at the Indian Industrial school at Pawnee Agency. That is where I got to be called Pawnee Brown, and where the Pawnees became so friendly that they made me their white chief. But