"'I suppose,' says Percy, waggin' his head, wise, 'that's quite true.'
"And if there'd been fifty million Injuns ready to fricassee us the next minute I couldn't 'a' helped havin' another attack of that bronco-kitus that troubled me so.
"But your Uncle Zeke wasn't so cussed hilarious for the next four days. I expected that Injun back with his friends every minute, and what with watchin' all night and joshin' Percy all day I was plumb wore out. He made me kind of mad by not noticin' things was wrong, although that's the impression I'd labored to create upon him, as he'd say.
"The Injun didn't come, and he didn't come till I got mad at him, too. How was I to know that he finished up my idee by fallin' over, further down? So I fumed and I fussed, and I yearned inside of me to get square with somebody. And at last my chance come.
"Afternoon, hot and clear as usual. Percy asleep under a rock, and then, horses' footsteps! I jumped for the edge, and, boys, for a minute my sight give out. It wasn't Injuns; it was a lot of Uncle Sam's durned soldiers. I never expected to be so glad to see a soldier; I thought I despised 'em.
"I looked at 'em for a full half minute, thinking,' God bless old Percy's blistered nose, he's safe!' and then I done what I hadn't orter did out of that, desire to get even. I slid down the mountain and whanged away over their heads. It was like pokin' your finger in a hornets' nest. Up comes them soldiers, workin' the finest of Injun sneaks up the hill. If there ever was a grand sight in Nature it's a two-hundred-pound soldier entirely concealed by a rock twice the size of my fist.
"Y-a-as, here they come; and I flitted my red handkercher like it was a 'Pache's head-dress, leadin' 'em on to where Percy was. I got there first and crawled into a cave where I could watch. I looked at Percy, sleeping, remarkin' 'whooo-whisssh!' at regular intervals, his little baby face surrounded by his white handkercher, his little fat hands folded on his little fat stomach, and I could scarcely wait for the time when them soldiers' eyes should fall upon their treacherous, fierce, and implackibble foe.
"The lieutenant was a kid, just gradooated—one of the kind that thinks it's glorious to get killed and read about it in the papers. He led his men into the simple quiet of our camp, crouched and tur'ble, a gun in each hand . . . and there was the United States army and there was the sleepin' Percy, face to face!
"'What . . . !' says the lieutenant, falling back ten foot. 'What . . . !' says he, falling back twenty feet and losin' his voice. 'What . . . !'says he, gatherin'himself; 'what is this?
"And then I come out of the cave and rolled on the ground.