“Have you?” asked Moses, elbowing forward.
“Oh,” said Jimmy, contemptuously—“you! Yes, I’m satisfied with you, too. All I want is to stay along on the ark—along with the horses and the chickens, after I’ve licked Louis Gist. I don’t see him anywhere. I thought he was goin’ along with you?”
“He went overboard, up the river,” explained Lewis Hoyt.
The thought of Louis Gist made them silent a moment, and Marion remembered poor Cutler, the only other victim of their perilous voyage so far.
“Oh,” said Jimmy; “well, I guess I’m not going to hold that grudge any longer. Marion, will you take me along?”
Marion had stood silent, thinking of Uncle Amasa hiding his breaking heart under a brave front as the ark sailed away. He wanted to say, “Oh, Jimmy, why did you!” but instead of that he held out his hand, and the tall young Indian grasped it and shook it up and down in a way inherited from an Anglo-Saxon ancestry.
“Will we?” said Marion; “well, you just try us! Some of these fellows wanted to mutiny to go back for you, on account of your letter—didn’t you, Kenton?”
“I think you might look at my leg,” grumbled Kenton, shamefacedly.