THE HAIRY THIEF THAT WALKED ON TWO LEGS.
No wonder the returned scouts stared, hardly daring to believe their eyes and ears. Some of them of course thought Ginger might have gone out of his head. Only on the preceding night had Elmer been telling them what queer antics animals out on the plains go through with, when they have been eating the loco weed.
There were a few who seemed to have a hazy suspicion that possibly Red might be concerned in this strange fright on the part of poor Ginger. True, the boy with the lame leg had apparently just dragged himself out of the tent, and the look on his face under that fiery shock of hair would indicate astonishment as genuine as their own; but then, how were they to know but what this had been assumed?
Mr. Garrabrant, however, made direct for the moaning and wabbling negro, who had fallen on his knees, and with clasped hands was bowing back and forth in an agony of fear.
"Here, what's the matter with you, Ginger?" he demanded, catching hold of the other, and while Ginger gave a little screech at first, upon turning his rolling eyes upward he appeared to recognize the genial face of the young scout master.
"Oh! Mistah Grabant, am dat youse?" he cried, seizing hold of the other's arm. "I'se mighty glad tuh see yuh, suh, 'deed an' I is. Am it gone foh suah?"
"What gone?" demanded Mr. Garrabrant, sternly. "See here, Ginger, have you kept a black bottle hidden away all this time while we have been in camp?" For he had a sudden inspiration that possibly Ginger might be addicted to the failing that besets so many of his color.
"'Deed an' 'deed an' I ain't touched a single drap, suh," declared the demoralized one; "'clar tuh goodness if I has. It war dar, jes' ober yander, whar de box ob crackers am alyin' right now. An' he scolded me, suh, foh interferin' wid de liberties he am takin' wid dem provisions, dat he did! Ugh! tuh t'ink dat I'd lib tuh set eyes on de Ole Nick!"
"But what makes you think it was Satan? Perhaps it was only some wandering hobo who thought he saw a good chance to steal something to eat?" and the scout master sought to hold Ginger's roving eyes fastened upon his own orbs, so as to rivet his attention, and secure a coherent answer to his question.
"Sho! dat was no human animal, suh!" exclaimed Ginger, earnestly. "He done hab a cover ob red hair, an' de wickedest grin on his face yuh ebber see. Reckon I knows de debble w'en I sees him."