“I should like to have him for a curiosity,” added the lieutenant.
“That’s what Archie wants him for, I believe—or something else. If you can’t tell me where to find Uncle Dick, I guess I’ll go. Good-by.”
Eugene rode away from the lieutenant’s quarters demurely enough, but as soon as he was safe through the gate and out of hearing of Frank and the rest, he threw himself forward on the horn of his saddle and laughed so heartily that Fred and Archie, who were waiting for him behind an angle of the stockade, looked at him in amazement as he came up. Their faces brightened at once, for they knew he had good news to communicate.
“It is all right,” said Eugene, as soon as he could speak. “If you want to see a crest-fallen set of fellows, just go and call on the lieutenant. He says he’ll buy this horse if you want to sell him. He’d like to keep him for a curiosity.”
“O, he would, would he?” said Archie. “I know a story worth two of that. I don’t want to sell.”
“Of course you don’t. Now let’s go down to camp, and after Fred and I have saddled our horses, we’ll go out and have a gallop. I want to see this fellow move.”
The others readily agreed to this proposition. The numerous defeats they had sustained in their efforts to make Frank “take a back seat,” as they expressed it, had made them timid, and they wanted to know just what their new horse could do before they began boasting of his speed. The camp reached and the horses saddled, the three boys rode off and finally disappeared behind the swells.
The races that began as soon as they were out of sight of the camp and Fort continued for half an hour or more, each boy in turn riding the new horse; and the rapidity with which he moved over the ground when put to the top of his speed, and the ease with which he left the others behind, were enough to make the three friends dance with delight. They did not know that there were three persons who were watching their movements with a great deal of interest, but such was the fact. One of them was an Indian, who had thrown himself flat upon the summit of a neighboring swell, so that nothing but the top of his head could be seen above the grass, and the others were two horsemen who sat in their saddles in plain view of the racers. They were Frank and the lieutenant.