"Humph!" grunted Carey, whose wound seemed to put him in very bad humor.
"What makes you say that?" demanded Bob, turning upon him somewhat sharply. "Don't you know that such things have been done before now?"
"By boys?" asked Carey.
"Yes, by boys," replied Bob.
"No, I don't know it," said the wounded trooper.
"It's a matter of history, any way," said George. "Two brothers, John and Henry Johnson, aged respectively thirteen and eleven years of age, were captured by two Delaware Indians on Short Creek, West Virginia, in October, 1788. That very night they killed their captors by shooting one and tomahawking the other."
"Did they get away?" asked Sheldon eagerly.
"Yes, sir, they got away. Now, I want to ask you a few questions—and, Bob, I want you to pay attention to his replies.—Where have you been to get so much mud on your boots?"
"Why, back there in the plains we came to a little bayou, and the banks of it was all muddy; and the Injins they pulled us off the ponies and made us walk into all that there mud, and then they laughed at us because we didn't like it," answered the boy; and his ludicrous display of rage over the indignity that had been put upon himself and his brother made the troopers smile again.
"Go on," said George. "What did you do next?"