He wanted to, but he held back, afraid of what would happen if he killed them both.

Slipping Weasel had already told him that the old men had talked to Buffalo Hump about sending him out of the tribe. It was because of his Mexican blood, Blue Duck felt sure. Several young men in the tribe had been born of white captives, or brown captives, and the old men didn't like it. The half-breeds were sometimes driven out. The old men might tell his father that it was because of his behaviour, his fighting, that he should be sent away, but Blue Duck didn't believe it. They wanted to be rid of him because he carried his mother's blood. He often thought of leaving the tribe himself, but hadn't, because he was not ready and not equipped. He had only a poor gun, and now he had no horse. When he was ready he meant to leave of his own accord--one morning his father would just discover that he was gone. He would shame the old ones, though, by killing more whites than any of the young men who were pure blood, of the tribe.

"Get off your horse, I need it," Blue Duck said, walking over to Slipping Weasel.

Slipping Weasel was shocked that Blue Duck would be so rude. There was a polite way to inquire about borrowing horses, but Blue Duck had not bothered about the polite way--m and more he did not bother with the polite way, which is why many of the younger warriors did not want to go with him when he wanted to hunt or raid. He was not a great chief, like his father. He could not simply order people to give him horses. It was true that he was wounded and would probably like to ride a horse to camp, but the camp was not far away. Why would he need a horse now, when he had to walk only a little distance further?

Besides, Slipping Weasel and Last Horse had been thinking of going on a deer hunt. If Blue Duck had been badly hurt they would have helped him without question--but he wasn't badly hurt. There was no reason they should waste time when the deer were farther down the canyon, waiting to be killed. Last Horse had seen them just at dusk --they would not have grazed far in one night, especially since they would have to paw at the sleety grass with their hooves before they could eat it.

"I see the Buffalo Horse up there," Last Horse remarked. The whole rim of the canyon was bright now, with the sunny dawn.

"If he had stepped on you, you would not need to borrow anybody's horse, because you would be dead," he added. "That horse has big feet." "I see him standing up there," Slipping Weasel said, looking up at the Buffalo Horse. He would have liked a closer look at the great horse--all the Comanches would have liked a closer look. But there was no way to get one without having to fight Big Horse Scull.

"I have heard that the Buffalo Horse can fly," Last Horse said. "They say his wings are larger than the wings of many buzzards put together. If he flies down here while we are talking I am going to run away." "If he flies down here I will shoot him," Slipping Weasel said. He too had heard the rumour that the Buffalo Horse could fly. He watched the horse closely; he too meant to run if the Buffalo Horse suddenly spread his wings and flew down at them.

Blue Duck didn't bother replying to such foolishness. If the Buffalo Horse could fly, Scull would long ago have flown above the Comanche people and killed them all. His father had once told him that there were vision women who could teach a man to fly, but no one had introduced him to such a vision woman. Buffalo Hump admitted that he himself might not be able to fly, because of the weight of his hump, but he thought that other men might be able to, if they could find the right old woman to teach them.

Blue Duck walked on away from the two men --he decided not to bother with their horses. The two vexed him so, that he might forget and kill them if he stayed around them; then he would be driven from the camp before he was ready to go.

When Blue Duck walked away, Slipping Weasel saw that most of his back was covered with fresh blood. The sight made him feel a little guilty. Blue Duck might have a worse wound than he and Last Horse supposed. What if he were to die before he reached camp? Men could die very suddenly, once they lost too much blood.

One minute they might be walking and the next minute they might be dead.

Part Mexican or not, Blue Duck .was the son of Buffalo Hump, and Buffalo Hump was their great chief. Though he didn't seem to be particularly fond of Blue Duck, there was no telling what Buffalo Hump might do if his own son dropped dead from a wound received fighting the white men. It would come out, of course, that he and Last Horse had failed to lend him a horse, although he was bleeding a lot. It would not please Buffalo Hump; there was no telling what he might do.

With that in mind Slipping Weasel trotted after Blue Duck--the deer down the valley could wait a few minutes, before they were killed.

"You had better take my horse," he said.

"You have too much blood coming out of you--I don't think you should be walking." Blue Duck ignored him. He was close to the camp now. Why should he take a horse when he had already done the walking?

Besides, now that he was close to camp and no longer had to fear that Gun In The Water or Silver Hair McCrae would slide down the canyon wall and ambush him, he was in no great hurry to get home. He would soon have to admit to his father that he had lost a horse, and his father would not be pleased.

"Your Mongol Hun cooked his meat by horse heat," Inish Scull observed. He was comfortably seated on a large rock at the edge of the Palo Duro, studying the distant Comanche camp through his binoculars. Gus and Call had both wanted to scamper down the slope after the fleeing warrior, but Inish Scull waved them back.

"Nope, it's too shadowy yet," he said.

"We'll not be skating down a cliff this morning after one red killer. He might have a few friends, scattered among those rocks." "I don't think so, Captain," Call said.

"He was alone when he came at me." "That doesn't contradict my point," the Captain said, a little sharply. Woodrow Call, though a more than competent fighting man, had a disputatious nature--not a welcome thing, in Inish Scull's command.

"If his friends were hiding in the rocks, then they couldn't have been with him when he shot the arrow at you, now could they?" Scull said. "Human beings are rarely in two places at once, Mr.

Call." Call didn't reply. Of course human beings couldn't be in two places at once; but the fleeing boy was well past the rocks in question, and no one had appeared to join him.

Augustus was puzzled by the remark about horse heat, a form of heat he had never heard of; nor was he exactly clear about the Mongol Huns.

The Captain was always talking about faraway places and peoples he had never heard of, Gurkhas and Zulus and Zouaves and the like, frequently launching into a lecture just as Augustus was possessed of a powerful urge to sleep. What he wanted to do at the moment was stretch out on a big rock and let the warm sun bake the chill out of him.