He was fingering his rifle, as he made the last observation. But on receiving the information of our retaliation his face brightened, and he gave utterance to a guttural exclamation of fierce and somewhat blasphemous delight, to which it will be needless for the pen to do justice.
On arriving at the ranche where he had told us his brother settlers had taken refuge, we found the men hard at work building a regular stockade around a cabin, which had the year previous been erected for the double purpose of a school-house and Masonic Hall. In spite of the joy with which our intelligence was received, they did not however desist from their labors. And, possibly, they were right, as the Indian troubles continued, and though the savages refrained from positively besieging the stockade while the Buckskin Rangers were around, they on one or two occasions ran off large quantities of the stock.
During the remainder of the season, we were occupied in a continuous scouting through this entire section of the country.
It was during one of our expeditions that Tom Harvey, one of us, was the subject of a good joke.
Human nature, in whatever situation it may be placed, has always a ludicrous side. Commonly, indeed, humor would almost appear to be the twin-sister of sorrow. They would, indeed, seem to walk through life, leaning upon each other, and hand in hand, to the very edge of the grave. The marvellous creations of Shakespeare's genius partake well-nigh equally of Tragedy and Comedy. Even so was it with the Buckskin Rangers, and their leader may be pardoned if he presumes to recall one of those creations (without the remotest hope of rivalling the intellect he has just called attention to) with the view of justifying himself.
"Falstaff" was most undeniably, as he has been drawn by the great dramatist, a fat man. Wherever fat can be found, the spirit of Fun almost invariably selects it as the subject or perpetrator of a joke. Now Tom was a man of enormous dimensions, if not in length, very certainly in width. Brighton Bill once said of him, that:
"Hif 'e was 'ammered hout, 'e would be long henough to reach the Nor' Pole, hand find Sir John Franklin."
If he had not been slenderer than Tom, I think his scalp, the moment after Bill had uttered this observation, might very possibly have been in the possession of Harvey.
However, this is a digression.