"Friend!" said Cherokee Bill, without further emotion.
"Well, I am knocked endwise!—The chief!" exclaimed the stranger, in amazement. It was no other than Mr. Filditch.
"Just in time," said Bill Williams, waving his hands hospitably in a kind of welcoming grace over the edibles, "though you are not precisely the man or men I expected."
"Well, I hope he is not dying of hunger, as I am," answered the Yankee Californian, dropping down joyfully in front of his friend. "We have been pushing on with such forced marches that we don't know what eating, sitting still, means!"
"We!" ejaculated the hunter, with what was great astonishment for him.
"What we? When we parted company you were about the lonesomest man in the woods, I should allow."
"Lonesome and lost, chief! Well, I wandered about alone, but I came back a hundred strong!"
"With these horse from the south'ard? I was expecting them."
"Perhaps Don Gregorio telegraphed to you overnight that he was about due?" cried Filditch, jestingly, as well as a mouth full of food would permit.
"Don Gregorio? That's all right, then! They are friends, for sure. That's a weight off my mind!"