When he looked again, Peppajee was sucking hard at the pipe, and gazing impersonally at the place.

He bent again, and hid the glow of his pipe against his ankle.

His thin lips tightened while he held it there, but the lean, brown fingers were firm as splinters of the rock behind him.

When the fire cooled, he fanned it to life again with his breath, and when it winked redly at him he laid it grimly against his flesh.
So, while Good Indian stood and looked on with lips as tightly drawn as the other's, he seared a circle around the wound--a circle which bit deep and drew apart the gashes like lips opened for protest.

He regarded critically his handiwork, muttered a "Bueno" under his breath, knocked the ashes from his pipe, and returned it to some mysterious hiding-place beneath his blanket.