“That ain’t what I’m driving at, but if a hoss had been wounded or killed, he would have kicked up such a rumpus he’d stampeded all the others; they’d have scattered over the perarie and upset things so promiscuous that we’d never got ’em agin. More’n that, thar would’ve been such times in camp that the varmints would have sailed in, and if we’d managed to stand ’em off, a good many of ye wouldn’t be left to talk about it this morning.”
The listeners shuddered at the picture brought up by the words of the grizzled guide. None of them had once thought of the terrifying peril named, but they saw that it had been real and beyond the power of exaggeration.
The most complacent member of the company was Jethro Mix. Shagbark and Alden had taken pains to tell of his exploit, and if the fellow had been capable of blushing, he would have turned crimson, but that being beyond his power, he affected to make light of it all.
“Pshaw! dat ain’t nuffin,” he said when the wife of Abner Fleming complimented him; “I ’spects to do de same thing a good many more times afore we gits across de plains; de fac’ is, I’m on to dem Injins and dey’ll find it out; when dey wokes up Jethro Mix dey wokes up de wrong passenger and dere’s gwine to be trouble in de land.”
“I never heard of firing at a spot where an enemy is not supposed to be,” ventured Richard Marvin, another member of the company, and somewhat of a wag.
“Who ’sposed he warn’t dere?” demanded Jethro. “I knowed he was dere ’cause he wasn’t dere—so I aimed at de spot where he wasn’t ’cause I knowed he was dere. Doan’ you see?”
“I’m glad to have so clear an explanation,” gravely replied the gentleman; “but it seems to me there must have been a good deal of guesswork, for there was no way by which you could know of a certainty which way—the right or the left—he had moved.”
“No guesswork ’bout it,” loftily remarked Jethro.
“Could you see him as he lay in the grass?”
“Ob course not.”