It was a victory!
"That feller's lost his face!" One-Eye confided to Johnnie when the bedroom door was shut. He winked emphatically with that darkly colored good eye.
"L—lost his face?" cried Johnnie, aghast. "What y' mean, One-Eye? But he had it this mornin'! I saw it!"
"Aw, y' little jay-hawk!" returned the cowboy, fondly.
Then, excitement! In a short space of time which the Westerner described as "two shakes o' a lamb's tail," Johnnie was garbed from hat to leggings in a brand-new scout uniform, and was gloating and gurgling over another Robinson Crusoe, another Treasure Island, another Last of the Mohicans, another Legends of King Arthur, and another Aladdin. Each had tinted illustrations. Each was stiff with newness, and sweet to the smell. "And the sky-book, 'r whatever y' call it, and the scout-book, w'y, they'll come t'morra, 'r the day after, I don't know which. —Wal, what d' y' say?"
"I say 'Thanks'—with all of me!" Johnnie answered, trembling with earnestness. They shook hands solemnly.
"Oh, our books!" cried Grandpa. "Our nice, little soldier!" To him, the cowboy's presents were those which had gone into the stove.
There was something in that newspaper for Johnnie to read. It was a short announcement. This had in it no element of surprise for him, since it told him nothing he did not already know. Nevertheless, it took his breath away. In a column headed "Marriages" were two lines which read, "Perkins-Way: April 18, Algernon Godfrey Perkins to Narcissa Amy Way."
"It's so!" murmured Johnnie, awed. "They're both married!" Seeing it in print like that, the truth was clinched, being given, not only a certainty, but a dignity and a finality only to be conveyed by type. "One-Eye, it's so!"
One-Eye 'lowed it was.