“Yes,” replied Tom, “if you don’t mind. You see, it is too soon to go to sleep, and if I have the lamp lit we will have more flying things about us than I care for.”
To keep stray pumas, or a wandering and inquisitive jaguar—the American tiger, at a respectable distance, a fire of wood was lit every evening, and near this lay talking low, and sometimes singing strange uncouth lilts of love and war, Tom’s five men. There was one drawback to their pleasure—the snakes. But it was a very slight one; for as a rule snakes do not bite unless you tread on their tails. They take good care you never tread on their heads; they glide away quickly enough to save the front portions of their anatomy. It is the after-part of the procession that cannot be got away in time to save itself, and when the unhappy man’s foot comes down the snake strikes at once, and there is but little chance of life after that.
Well, when one goes first to the wilderness, if he be a green hand, or tender-foot as the Yankees call a novice, he keeps thinking about snakes all day long, and they even follow him into his dreams, fevering body as well as mind, and destroying all chance of perfect happiness. But a few weeks in the wilds harden even a tender-foot, and he finds out as his face gets browner that even snakes never bite except in self-defence, and that if he observes ordinary caution he is as safe on the plains as he would be in Hyde Park.
“O,” said Samaro, “I shall be very much pleased.”
“Well then, tell me a story, and sing me a song if you can. I want to feel perfectly at home.”
And Samaro not only this night but every night almost told Tom stories of his wild life and adventures, and sang him songs, just as if he had been a little boy at home in his own bed-room. And to tell the truth Tom used very often to go to sleep before Samaro had done singing.
Tom, the black cat, invariably retired to the hammock with his master. By day he rode on the saddle sometimes, or he might disappear altogether for half a day at a time. Black Tom was permitted to do precisely as he pleased, and that is the secret of his affection for White Tom.
Tom was never tired hearing Samaro tell all about Uncle Robert’s adventures, and, to a great extent, he determined to do very much as his uncle had done.
“It will be such a surprise, you know,” he told Samaro, “to collect precisely the same kind of curios, and skins of birds and beasts, and butterflies, and beetles as Uncle Robert did. Why, when I go home and show him all these, he will be as happy as the good little boys in the fairy-books.”
This was a happy thought, and Samaro entered into the scheme with great spirit and joy.