Then he dreamily stared into the red embers, and was silent.
“Look here!” Joe cried in a testy tone. “Don’t be goin’ back into the past an’ dreamin’ ’bout things that can never be, Ross Douglas. Me an’ Bright Wing wants to hear ’bout how you sarcumvented the redskins an’ got here to the fort. Don’t we, Injin?”
The Wyandot lifted his head from between his knees and answered:
“Ugh! Want know ’bout fight—heap much, all, everything.”
Douglas smiled wearily and began his narrative. As he proceeded with his graphic description of the battle and the incidents and adventures following it, his interested comrades drew closer to him and listened with eager attention, to every word that fell from his lips. The camp-fires died down; the garrison was wrapped in silence and darkness. Nothing broke the stillness but Douglas’s whispered tones, the heavy breathing of the sleeping soldiers, and the muffled footfalls of the sentries pacing their beats about the walls. At last Ross closed his recital, and yawningly remarked:
“I’ve told you all. Now let’s lie down to rest; my eyes are so heavy that I can hardly keep them open.”
“An’ no wonder,” Farley murmured. “Ross, you’ve been through a heap to-day—a dang sight! But jest let me ask you one question. Now you’ve found ol’ Sam Larkin’s gal—an’ she’s a wife an’ a mother—what’re you goin’ to do?”
“Save her from the brute who has ruined her life,” Douglas replied fiercely.
“That’s all right,” Joe persisted. “But how’re you goin’ to do it?”