“Yes, I lost my mother when I was eight and I was fetched up by Mis’ Brown, aunt o’ Mr. John’s.”
“Humph!” Ira returned to an appreciation of his biscuits and honey.
“Queer there should be another Cyrus Sparks down here in Texas,” said Louisa breaking the silence, for all the men were eating steadily, solemnly and ravenously.
“’Tis queer,” returned Ira. “Old Cy don’t live so terrible far from here. He’s a mean old cuss, though, and I reckon you kin thank your stars that you don’t need to call him pop. No, thank you, miss, I’m sorry to say that I’ve reached my limit. Jerusalem, but I’ve eat hearty!”
Christine had scarcely tasted her supper, but gave her attention to the hungry men. Alison was eagerly alert, her bright little face framed by its bands of fair hair was turned interestedly from one to another. “I think it is time that you told us where you have been all these hours,” she said, her curiosity refusing to be satisfied. “Out with your story, Mr. Jordan.”
“Pretty tame sort of story, isn’t it, boys?” he began. “If we had come back without our scalps it might have been interesting, though we wouldn’t have looked as pretty.”
“And if we’d have left our hides with a lot of bullet holes in ’em we’d have missed one good supper,” remarked Ira. “I reckon it’s a good thing we didn’t come to closter quarters with the redskins. I ain’t to say skeered of ’em, though I’m blest if I wouldn’t rather die in a good rational fight with the boys all yellin’ around me than be kilt by some sneakin’ varmint ketchin’ you unawares when you’re out alone. I must say I don’t ache to play cock-robin and git kilt by a bow and arrer neither. I reckin I’m a sort of skeery fellow.”
A roar of laughter went up at this. “It don’t seem to keep you much at home,” said Neal.
“Well, no, it don’t. I hev to hev my constitutional every day or I git sick. I ain’t sayin’ I’d set at home alone like a toad ketchin’ flies rather’n go out by my lone. I ain’t such a drivelin’ pasty-faced baby as thet. I’m only expressin’ my druthers and a-sayin’ that we were lucky to git back to supper. When I ponder on these here wittles, I tell you, Miss Sparks, I wisht I was twins, so I could eat ’em twicet over.” These remarks met the applause he meant they should, and after the laughter had settled down to an occasional chuckle Neal turned to Alison to give her an account of the day’s adventures.
“We surmised it was Injuns,” Neal began. “We found moccasin tracks and other signs. There must have been about half a dozen of the redskins. We found, too, the tracks of a single horse and that we concluded was Hero. So we put this and that together and made up our minds that Steve went off hunting and the Injuns sneaked in after the horses. Well, we were in a dilemma; we wanted to find Steve and we wanted the horse stealers, so we divided; two of us followed up Hero’s tracks and two went for the other horses. Hero worked around in a sort of circle and brought us out on the road where he came up this morning. We’d looked close all the way and there wasn’t any sign of Steve, so we surmised he had struck out for home after he lost his horse and had taken a different way. We knocked around for awhile but after a bit we concluded that we’d better start up the road and see after the other boys; then we met up with Pike. He was to wait at his house for Ira and Reub and get their report. They had come along by there and had gone on. Well, in about half an hour back they came. No luck. Injuns had got so far off that there was no good following them and so we joined forces and came home together about as disgusted a lot as you ever saw. Not a blessed bit of fun the entire time.”