Tish, however, approached him warily, having given her revolver to me.

“He might try to get it from me, Lizzie,” she observed.  “Keep it pointed in our direction, but not at us.  I’m going to tie him again.”

This she proceeded to do, tying his hands behind him and fastening his belt also to the horn of the saddle, but leaving his feet free.  All this was done to the accompaniment of bitter vituperation.  She pretended to ignore this, but it made an impression evidently, for at last she replied.

“You have no one to blame but yourself,” she said.  “You deserve your present humiliating position, and you know it.  I’ve made up my mind to take you all in and expose your cruel scheme, and I intend to do it.  I’m nothing if I am not thorough,” she finished.

He made no reply to this, and, in fact, he made only one speech on the way back, and that, I am happy to say, was without profanity.

“It isn’t being taken in that I mind so much,” he said pathetically.  “It’s all in the game, and I can stand up as well under trouble as any one.  It’s being led in by a crowd of women that makes it painful.”

I have neglected to say that Tish was leading Mona Lisa, while I followed with the revolver.

It was not far from dawn when we reached the camp again.  Aggie was as we had left her, but in the light of the dying fire she looked older and much worn.  As a matter of fact, it was some weeks before she looked like her old self.

The girl was sitting where we had left her, and sulkier than ever.  She had turned her back to Mr. Oliver, and Aggie said afterward that the way they had quarreled had been something terrible.

Aggie said she had tried to make conversation with the girl, and had, indeed, told her of Mr. Wiggins and her own blasted life.  But she had remained singularly unresponsive.

The return of our new prisoner was greeted by the other men with brutal rage, except Mr. Oliver, who merely glanced at him and then went back to his staring at the fire.  It appeared that they had been counting on him to get assistance, and his capture destroyed their last hope.  Indeed, their language grew so unpleasant that at last Tish hammered sharply on a rock with the handle of her revolver.

“Please remember,” she said, “that you are in the presence of ladies!”

They jeered at her, but she handled the situation with her usual generalship.

“Lizzie,” she said calmly, “get the tin basin that is hanging to my saddle, and fill it with the water from that snowbank.  On the occasion of any more unseemly language, pour it over the offender without mercy.”

It became necessary to do it, I regret to state.  They had not yet learned that Tish always carries out her threats.  It was the one who we felt was the leader who offended, and I did as I had been requested to.  But Aggie, ever tender-hearted, feared that it would give the man a severe cold, and got Tish’s permission to pour a little blackberry cordial down his throat.