The other youngsters, seeing what had happened, scattered in all directions like a brood of startled quail, while the squaws—lusty old gals, all of them!—hastily snatched up the pappooses, which, in their wicker cradles, were lying across their laps, or standing against awning-posts or empty barrels, and deftly slinging them upon their backs, drew the straps across their foreheads, and started up the street at a rolling gallop, the noise of which resembled that of the stampede of a flock of fat wethers when in full wool.
The old hag mentioned as the “cherry-muncher”—probably fearing that a shrimp would be thrown into her straggling locks—hanging with both hands to the dead branch of a cedar, poled herself along in the rear of the stampeders with astonishing agility.
At the distance of thirty yards she halted to get her wind, and seeing that she was not being pursued, faced about. Still grasping her rude staff in both hands, and resting her wrinkled and venerable lump of nose on its top, she stared back at me from under her mop of grizzled hair, like an old witch frightened away from some unholy feast.
Some of the bucks sullenly marched away, casting backward glances from malevolent eyes which plainly showed their opinion of practical jokes, but Smoke Creek Sam stood his ground. He, too, had been outraged and disgusted, but as he had not yet found opportunity to beg a handful of smoking tobacco, he concealed his feelings and deferred his retreat. Extracting the pith of a particularly large and healthy shrimp, I approached Sam with it.
“You no bring um here!” cried he, waving me back with his hand. “No bring um, me say!”
“Just try this one, Sam,” said I.
“No!” said Sam, decidedly; “glash-hop, purty good; klicket, me eat um; scorpium-bug, heap no good. Scorpium make Injun man high up sick!”
SHRIMPS.
I now saw it all, and was not so much surprised at the astonishment and disgust shown by the whole crowd of redskins. Knowing nothing about shrimps, all supposed that I was eating scorpions, a poisonous reptile very abundant in Nevada, and very closely resembling the shrimp. Seeing me, as they supposed, deliberately devouring scorpions, all thought that the Evil One himself was before them.