Since the seizure of Gledware, the child had been lying on the rude
table in the midst of a greasy pack of cards--cards that had been
thrown down at the sound of his galloping horse.  The table
supported, also, much of the booty captured from the wagon-train,
while on the dirt floor beside it were prizes of the freebooting
expedition, too large to find resting-place on the boards.  Nor was
this all.  Mingled with stolen garments, cans and boxes of
provisions, purses and bags of gold, were the Indian disguises in
which the highwaymen from No-Man's Land had descended on the
prairie-schooners on their tedious journey from Abilene, Kansas,
toward the Southwest. 

In the midst of this confusion of disguises, booty and
playing-cards, surrounded by cruel and sensual faces, the child
slept soundly, her lips slightly parted, her cheeks delicately
flushed, her face eloquent in its appeal of helplessness, innocence
and beauty.  One of the band, a tall broad-shouldered man of
middle-age, with an immense quantity of whiskers perhaps worn as a
visible sign of inward wildness, was, despite his hardened nature,