"Yes," added Jake, with a sigh of something like pleasure; "it looks very much as though I've got a chance to even up my accounts with 'em all. The folks are having a good time on t'other side the river, and to-morrer, when Forty Fort surrenders, Wyoming will be wiped out so clean that the only way of telling where it has been will be by the ashes.  
"I've got a lot of the best Senecas that ever took the war-path, and I've promised them the biggest kind of a reward if they succeed in in the whole party. Queen Esther told 'em to go with me and do just as I directed, so they're bound to show the stuff they're made of. Gray Panther is their chief, and he's directing 'em, and he beats any Injin I ever heard tell of for downright cunning, and is as good as a bloodhound on the trail."
 
Thus it was that, although Jake Golcher was the head of the war party, the chief, Gray Panther, was guiding operations, and it is to that Seneca Indian that the success of the redskins in out-generaling the was due.
 
"I know that Maggie came near out with a broken heart when her mother died, three years ago," continued Golcher, "and she is so attached to her father, brother, and sister, that she will do anything in her power to save harm coming to them."
 
This fact could not fail to suggest the course that had taken shape in his mind long before.
 
"We will capture them all; then I'll make known my terms: Maggie must agree to marry me; she will do it, too, if she makes the promise, and I'll agree to let all the rest go. I'll keep my word so far as the old man and Eva, and I guess the Aunt Peggy, is concerned; but there's two that I'll wipe out—Fred Godfrey and that Gravity Gimp.
 
"I may have to promise to let up on 'em, but I can fix it with Gray Panther, so they'll be accidentally killed; but I'll never feel easy till they're both underground. As for that nigger—" And taking out his pipe, he ground his teeth together, and the fingers of the free hand, and then, looking up, saw Gravity Gimp, the African, before him.
 
"Good-evenin'," said the servant, bowing low, and making a with his broad hand, inasmuch as he was without his hat; "I hopes I finds yer werry well dis ebenin."
 
Jake Golcher sprang to his feet, and his pipe dropped from his hand. It often happens that the very person of whom we are thinking turns up before us, but, although there was nothing supernatural in the appearance of the African, the renegade was startled for the moment into believing that such was the fact.
 
Quickly recovering, he m............