“We told him his barn was on fire, sure we did, an’ helped him trow water on, an’ keep the thing from burnin’ down. He gives us a hunky dinner, an’ trows de trilbies in fur good measure. But dey hurts us bad, an’ we was jest a-sayin’ we wishes we had de ole uns back agin. If it wa’n’t so cold we’d take ’em off right now, and go bare-footed, wouldn’t we, Jake?”
“Oh! well, it doesn’t matter to us where you got the shoes,” said Thad. “We happen to be looking for another man, and thought one of you might be him. So go on with your cooking; and, Giraffe, where’s that knuckle of ham you said you hated to lug any further, but which you thought it a sin to throw away? Perhaps we might hand the same over to Smikes and Jake, to pay up for having given them such a bad scare.”
This caused the two tramps to grin in anxious anticipation; and when Giraffe only too willingly extracted the said remnant of a half ham which the scouts had started with, they eagerly seized upon it.
“It’s all right, young fellers,” remarked the one who had been called Smikes, as he clutched the prize; “we ain’t a-carin’ if we gits the same kind o’ a skeer ’bout once a day reg’lar-like, hey, Jake? Talk tuh me ’bout dinner rainin’ down frum the clouds, this beats my time holler. Cum agin, boys, an’ do it sum more.”
Thad knew it was folly to stay any longer at the camp, but before leaving he wished to put a question to the men.
“We’re looking for a fellow who calls himself Wandering George,” he went on to say. “Just now he’s wearing an old faded blue army overcoat that was given to him by a lady who didn’t know that her husband valued it as a keepsake. So we just offered to find it for him, and give George a dollar or so to make up. Have either of you seen a man wearing a blue coat like that?”
“Nixey, mister,” replied Jake promptly.
“Say, I used to wear a blue overcoat, like them, when I was marchin’ fur ole Unc Sam in the Spanish war, fool thet I was; but honest to goodness now I ain’t set eyes on the like this three years an’ more,” the second tramp asserted.
“That settles it, then, fellows!” ejaculated Step Hen, with a note of joy in his voice; “we’ve got to go on further, and run our quarry down. And let me tell you I’m tickled nearly to death because it’s turned out so.”
“Who be you boys, anyhow?” asked Smikes. “Air ye what we hears called scouts?”