"Hold hard, sonny!" cried Tom, detaining him with a firm hand. "That's too short an ending. Yer was surrounded. That's whar we got to. Let's have the rest quietly, and not thrown in all in a hurry."
"I ain't goin' ter say no more. I'm off ter my blanket," came the stolid answer.
"And that's jest whar I come in," cried Bill suddenly. "Yer remember Jacob lad was fer moving earlier on. That's when I began to help him. This time he's clean shut up, so I'll have to take the yarn to the very end. Jacob thar says it war hand-to-hand fightin'. In course, when the business was over, and we had time to take a look round, there was a goodish few of us as had been wounded. Two of our chaps was killed, while I guess we'd laid out thirty of the Injuns. But that ain't all. It war gettin' dusk when them critters was driven off, and you kin guess as it took a while to decide how many of our mates had been hurt, and to tend to those that needed it. It warn't fer half an hour, perhaps, that old man Staples sings out fer Jacob.
"'Whar is the man!' he asks, kind of anxious, fer he seemed to have taken a sudden and violent fancy to him. 'Whar is he?'
"And when we come to search high and low there wasn't a sign of the critter. He war clean gone."
"Gone!" exclaimed one of the men. "Whar? What fer?"
"Ha! That's what I'm a-comin' to," grinned Bill. "It aer that part of the yarn as wild hosses couldn't drag from Jacob. But he has got to hear it. Jest sit right down on him, Tom, and hold him. Gee! Ef his bashfulness don't beat me altogether."