Page:Thirty-One Years on the Plains and in the Mountains.djvu/75

Rh When they pushed open the heavy log door, the scalps were almost in their faces.

"Who did this?" said Uncle Kit, as he threw his heavy pack on the dirt floor.

I told him and he was very much astonished.

"How was it, Willie?" he asked, and I told him the whole story.

While I was telling him the story, as briefly as I could, he showed more agitation than I had ever seen him exhibit.

During all the time I had been with him, he had never spoken a harsh word to me, up to this time. But while we were at supper he said to me:

"My boy, don't let me ever hear of you taking such chances again. Not that I care for you killin' the Injuns, but you took great chances for losing your own hair, for had them redskins got sight of you, by the time they had got through with you, your hide wouldn't have held corn shucks. And it's a mystery to me that they didn't see you."

The following morning after breakfast we all took a trip up the canyon, where I had gone the morning before, and we took with us twelve beaver traps that they had brought up from the cache, and these we set at different places along the stream.

After they were set Uncle Kit asked me if I thought I could find all of them again, and I said I thought I could.

"All right then," he said. "It will be your job to tend these traps, until Jim and me get the balance of the