with which it had been painted.

"I chopped that from one end of the thing," Jones went on,
replacing the chip in its paper and leather case. "And lucky I put
it in my pocket. For right at my back came one loud word--more
like a croak than a word, in my way of thinking. And there was
that lean old fellow with the eagle beak that had dropped in on us
one night. And there was about thirty Indians with him--all slim
young fellows.

"Vahna'd flopped down and begun whimpering, but I told her, 'Get up
and make friends with them for me.' 'No, no,' she cried. 'This is
death. Good-bye, amigo--'"

Here Mrs. Jones winced, and her husband abruptly checked the
particular flow of his narrative.

"'Then get up and fight along with me,' I said to her. And she
did. She was some hellion, there on the top of the world, clawing
and scratching tooth and nail--a regular she cat. And I wasn't
idle, though all I had was that hatchet and my long arms. But they
were too many for me, and there was no place for me to put my back
against a wall. When I come to, minutes after they'd cracked me on
the head--here, feel this."

Removing his hat, Julian Jones guided my finger tips through his
thatch of sandy hair until they sank into an indentation. It was
fully three inches long, and went into the bone itself of the
skull.