"Reckon you was wishin' you hadn't row'd with the boss," grinned Tom.
"P'raps you had falled asleep on your hoss," cried Seth, "and was sorter dreamin'."
Jacob snorted with indignation. "As ef that war likely," he cried. "Didn't I say as I howled with pain when the flint struck me? No. You're guessin'. The shanty war there, standin' black in the moonlight, and them shouts were real. They were shrill, and come from a woman. They kind of scared me fer a minute."
"Yer bolted again?" asked Steve.
"I jest hooked the reins over the corner of a post standin' outside the stockade, and clambered over."
"More bullets," suggested one of the men.
"Shots, yes, but not in my direction. Thar was shoutin', a man's and a woman's, and then shootin'. Then the door of the shanty war opened and I ran in."
Jacob stopped for a moment at the most critical point in his narrative, causing all his comrades to sit up expectantly.
"Wall?" demanded Tom irritably, stuffing his pipe with his finger.
"It was Injuns," asserted one of the men. "Yer was taken by a bit of foolin'."