“Yes,” I answered. “It was Pike.”
“If you just came, how do you happen to know Pike?” he asked.
“He pulled me up last night by the ear and looked at me with a lantern,” I said.
“Well,” replied the man, “we’ll take you down and you can look at him with a lantern.”
They formed into a solid body, four abreast, with Dawson ahead holding me by the arm, as if he were afraid I would get away. To tell the truth, I should have been glad enough to have got out of the thing, but there seemed to be no chance of it. I was glad my mother could not know about me.
We soon came up to the camp, and the men lined out and held their guns ready for use. Not a sound was to be heard except the loud snoring of the men in the nearest tent, which seemed to me almost too loud. There was a dying camp-fire, and the stars were bright and twinkling in a deep-blue sky; but I didn’t look at them much.
“Come, you fellows, get up!” called Dawson. This brought no answer. 14
“Come!” he called louder, “roust up there, every one of you. There’s fifty of us, and we’ve got our boots on!”
A man put his head sleepily out of a tent and wanted to know what was the trouble. Dawson repeated his commands. One of our men tossed some wood on the fire, and it blazed up and threw the long shadows of the tents out across the prairie. One by one the men came out, as if they were just roused from sleep. There was a great amount of loud talk and profanity, but at last they were all out. Pike was one of the last. Dawson made them stand up in a row.
“Now, young man,” said he to me, “pick out the man you saw fire the shot that killed Allenham.”