“My!” he gasped, “but it will feel awful queer and empty without Old Blazes. That rifle was a reg’lar corker, boys. I was saving up for three years to buy it. An’ it never went back on me. Times when I’ve gone far off hunting, and had nary a chance to speak to a human for weeks, I’d get to talking to it like as if ’twas a living thing. When I wasn’t afeard of scaring game, I’d fire a round to make it answer back and drive away lonesomeness. Folks might ha’ thought I was loony, only there was none to see. Well, it’s smashed to chips now, ’long with the old camp.”
“What awfully selfish jackasses we were, to skip off with our own rifles, and never think of yours, or that you couldn’t save it, carrying that poor fellow! I feel like kicking myself,” said Cyrus, sharp vexation in his voice. “But that slide business sprang on us so quickly. The sudden rumbling, rattling, and pounding jumbled a fellow’s wits. I scarcely understood what was up, even when we were scooting for our lives.”
“I felt a bit white-livered myself, I tell ye; and I’m more hardened to slides than you are,” was the woodsman’s answer.
The confession, taken in the light of his conduct, made him doubly a hero to his city friends.
They thought of him staggering along the mountain, blinded, bewildered, pelted by clay, with that dragging burden in his arms, a heart tossed by danger’s keenest realization in his breast. And they were silent before the high courage which can recognize fear, yet refuse to it the mastery.
Neal, whose secret musings were generally crossed by a military thread, seeing that he had chosen the career of a cavalry-soldier, and hoped soon to enter Sandhurst College, stared into the heart of the camp-fire, glowering at fate, because she had not ordained that Herb should serve the queen with him, and wear upon his resolute heart—as it might reasonably be expected he would—the Victoria Cross.
Young Farrar’s feeling was so strong that it swept his lips at last.
“Blow it all! Herb,” he cried. “It’s a tearing pity that you can’t come into the English Lancers with me. I don’t suppose I’ll ever be a V.C., but you would sooner or later as sure as gun’s iron.”
“A ‘V.C.!’ What’s that?” asked Herb.
“A Vigorous Christian, to be sure!” put in Cyrus, who was progressive and peaceful, teasingly.