“It is Sandhelo!” she exclaimed. “Here’s part of his red, white and blue cockade still sticking in his hair.”
“That’s our donkey,” cried all the girls and boys, pressing close around. “Where did you get him?”
“He is not,” declared the man angrily. “I raise him myself since he was young.”
“That is not true,” said Sahwah shrewdly. “If you had had him very long you would know how to make him go. It seems to me that this is the first time you’ve ever tried to drive him.”
“He is mine, he is mine,” declared the man. “I know how to make him go. He always go for me.”
“Then make him go,” said Sahwah coolly.
The man tried to urge the donkey forward, but in vain.
“Now, we’ll show you how to make him go,” said Sahwah. “Where’s that boy with the horn?” She ran up the street a distance and found the boy seated on a doorstep and bribed him with a few pennies to let her take the horn. Then, walking along ahead of Sandhelo she played a half dozen lively notes, such as had sent him flying round the circus ring. No sooner had she started than he started at a great rate. When she stopped he stopped.
“It’s Sandhelo without mistake,” they all cried, and the last doubt vanished when he came up alongside of Sahwah and laid his head on her shoulder the way he always had done.
“He belongs to us,” said the Captain, looking the man in the eye, “and you’ll have to give him up.”