“Now, you go in the bath-room and wash your face in cold water, and you will be all right,” and the boy did so, and came back with almost a smile on his face, and he looked at the papers on the table, and said:
“Uncle Ike, you didn't send that appendicitis story to my girl, did you? Gosh, but I am all right now, and I am not going to die.”
“No, I didn't send it; but next time I will, by ginger,” and the old man laughed. “Here, have a smoke on me,” but the boy went out in the open air and kicked himself.
CHAPTER XVI.
It was a beautiful, hot, sunny morning, and after breakfast Uncle Ike came out on the porch in his shirt sleeves, and with a pair of old hunting shoes on, and his shirt sleeves rolled up, showing the sleeves of a red flannel undershirt, a kind he always wore, winter and summer. He leaned against the post of the porch, lit his pipe, and looked away toward the hazy, hot horizon, and thought of old days that had been brought to his mind the day before, when he saw the parade of a Wild West show. The old man was a '49er, who went across the plains for gold when the country was young, and the yells of the Indians had made him nervous, as they did half a century ago. He had staked the red-headed boy and several of his chums to go to the show, and was waiting for them to show up and report. He stepped down on the lawn and took up the nozzle of a sprinkler and turned it on a lilac bush, when suddenly there was a yell that was unmistakably that of a Comanche Indian; and he stopped and looked at the bush, and could plainly see a moccasin and a leg with buckskin fringe on it, and he knew the boys were laying for him, to scalp him and have fun with him; so he held the nozzle as his only protection against the bloodthirsty band of savages, headed by Chief Red Head, his nephew, but a bad Indian when off the reservation. From behind an evergreen tree down by the gate there came a blood-curdling yell, which was evidently from the throat of “Watermelon Jim,” a neighbor's boy, while from the wild cucumber vine on the south porch came a noise like that of a pack of wolves breakfasting on a fawn.
“Surrender!” shouted a damp voice from behind the lilac bush, where the hose was turned. “Surrender, or we burn down your ranch over your head!” and a painted Indian, with red, short hair showing under the feather, crawled toward a rosebush, where it was dry.
“Never!” said Uncle Ike, as he bit the stem of his pipe, and smiled at the boys who were peeking out from behind the different hiding places. “Your Uncle Ike often dies, but he never surrenders,” and he cocked the nozzle of the lawn sprinkler, and stood ready for the attack.
The red-headed Indian lit a parlor match and held it aloft, which was apparently a smoke signal, for an Indian behind the porch appeared and suddenly a swish was heard in the air, and a piece of clothesline with a noose in it came near going over Uncle Ike's head; so near that it broke his clay pipe, leaving the stem between his lips.
“Ah, ha! You will, will you? Vamoose!” said Uncle Ike, as he turned the hose on the Indian with the lasso, and drove him behind the porch with water dripping down his calico shirt, taking the color out. Then an Indian near the gate began to fire blank cartridges with a toy pistol and Uncle Ike put his elbow up in front of his face, as he said afterward, to save his beauty, and Uncle Ike started toward that Indian, dragging the hose, and shouting, “Take to the chaparral, condemn you, or I will drown you out like a gopher!”