“Have ye loaded yer gun?”
“Not yet; I didn’t think of it, and have hardly had time.”
“When ye shoot off yer piece, the next thing is to load up ag’in, for ye’re likely to need it mighty sudden; ’tend to that while I take a look round.”
The rifle used in those days was not the modern breech-loader, though they were beginning to come into use, but Alden’s weapon, like those of his friends, carried but the single charge which entered the muzzle. Screening himself in the shadow cast by the wagon, he proceeded to ram a charge down the barrel, while the guide did as he said he would do. He passed from one guard to another until he had made the round. He told the three who had been roused from sleep to go back and wait until he called them.
Mr. Fleming was stationed at the Conestoga which stood opposite and the farthest from the one in which his wife and others lay.
“I don’t like it,” he said curtly to Shagbark; “I ought to guard my own family.”
“Could ye do any better than that younker done?” asked the guide.
“I don’t believe I could; none the less, I feel that my right place is there.”
“I tell ye that younker is a hummer; not yerself nor any man in the crowd is better than him at a time like this; if his father and mother don’t want him I’m going to adopt him. In two or three years among the Rockies he’ll make the best kind of a hunter or trapper, instid of wasting his time larning larning which ain’t no good to nobody. But I say, Abner, if ye really want to change places with him, ye can do so.”