"Then why're you goin' to run away," asked the boy wonderingly.
"That's my business. Something you can't understand, nohow. Now, I want you to slip around there and git my overcoat and things and bring 'em out to me, without nobody seein' you. Do it at once."
While Sammy was gone for the things Shorty laboriously wrote out a note to Si upon a sheet of brown paper. It read:
"Deer Si; ive jest red in the papers that the army's goin' 2
move rite off. i no tha need me bad in the kumpany, for tha
are short on Korprils, & tha can't do nothin' without
Korprils. ive jest time 2 ketch the nekst traine, & ime
goin' thare ez fast ez steme kin carry me. Good-by & luv 2
all the folks.
"Yours, Shorty."
"There, Sammy," he said, as he folded it up and gave it to the boy; "keep that quiet until about bed time, when they begin to inquire about me. By that time I'll 've ketched the train goin' east, and be skippin' out for the army. By the way, Sammy, can't you sneak into Miss Maria's room, and steal a piece o' ribbon, or something that belongs to her?"
"I've got a big piece o' that new red Sunday dress o' her's," said Sammy, going to his storehouse and producing it. "I cribbed it once, to make me a flag or something, when I'd be out fightin' the Injuns. Will that do you?"
"Bully," said Shorty, with the first joyous emotion since the reception of the letter. "It's jest the thing. Here's a half-dollar for you. Now, Sammy, kin you write?"
"They're makin' me learn, and that's one reason why I want to run away," with a doleful remembrance of his own grievances. "What's the use of it, I'd like to know? It cramps my fingers and makes my head ache. Simon Kenton couldn't write his own name, but he killed more Injuns than ary other man in the country. I guess you'd want to run away, too, if they made you learn to write."