“GUESS WHO HE IS! GUESS!”
He was incapable of another word. He simply stood and stared.
“Jimmy!” shouted Moses, dashing past into the cabin, “Jimmy! Here’s your pa!”
Marion had mechanically reached out and grasped the Indian’s hand and was bewilderingly shaking it. As soon as he recovered himself a little, he released it and allowed Lincoln to follow his example.
Lincoln spoke with much gravity. “You don’t say,” he drawled. “No wonder his robber friends told Jimmy that his pa would know him by the resemblance, when they fixed him up.”
James Claiborne, or Sam Hokomoke, drew himself up slightly, and the smile died out of his face at this reference to his having robber friends.
“Now you’ve offended him!” said Lewis, angrily. “I tell you he’s a big chief in his tribe, though he isn’t dressed in his war togs.”
“Oh,” murmured Lincoln; “just a social call. Well, we’re mighty glad to see you, Sam Hokomoke, or James Claiborne, whichever name you like the best, and we know Jimmy will be.”
“We are very glad to have you here,” said Marion, rousing from his stupefaction to his responsibilities as captain. It was almost impossible for him, any more than for Shadwell Lincoln, to accept him as a white man, like themselves. He had lost all resemblance to a white man at first glance. He was the color of seasoned leather, and the fact that he had fallen into the Indian ways of speech in his seldom practised English, made it seem as if he could not possibly understand everything they said as easily as they understood one another.
“We have missed you,” continued Marion, realizing that this was an absurd way to state the case, but unable for the life of him to think of a better one.