“I don’t know, boss, but what you’ll laugh at me, an’ think I mought be in better biziness, but—” hesitated Tom, a little nervously.
“Why should I, Tom? I certainly should not if you are in earnest. But what’s the matter?”
“Jest this: you hain’t forgot what Dusky Dick said, nor hain’t I n’ither. It’s be’n a-runnin in my mind all day, an’ I can’t help thinkin’ that thar’s so’thin’ in it. You know he said that we’d see him ag’in, an’ his eyes said, jest as plain as a nigger’s heel, that if we did, it would not be alone.”
“Then you think—?”
“I reckon; leastways I ’spect so. Ef you ax what, why I’ll bet a buffler’ hump ag’in’ a turkey buzzard, that we’ll ’ither see or hear so’thin’ o’ Mr. Dusky Dick, afore another sun. I feel it all over me.”
“What are you going to do?” somewhat impatiently asked Major Calhoun.
“First, I’m goin’ to scout ’round ontel dusk. I know the lay right well around here, an’ it’s jist the out-doin’est place you ever did see, for ’bushments and Injun deviltries. It’s a plain shoot for the river thar, an’ you won’t need me for that.”
“Well, don’t be gone long, nor run any more risk than is absolutely necessary, Maxwell,” earnestly added Calhoun; “for you are our only dependence, now. I don’t believe there is one of us all that has the slightest idea of where we are, or the road necessary to take, in order to reach safety.”
“Maje,” slowly said the old guide, “I’m a rough old coon, what ain’t o’ much a’count one way nor t’other; I hain’t got no kin, nor ’lations livin,’ as I knows on. I never hed a wife—leastways, nobody ’cept it mought be a squaw, now an’ then, for a week or so, an’ I never hed a child who could call me pap; but for all that, I know how you must feel when you look at Miss Clary, an’ think ’at she’s in danger.
“I ain’t o’ much a’count, as I said, for I’m old an’ most wored out, but still I’d fou’t as hard as the best, for the few drops o’ blood in my karkidge, an’ I say sooner than let her get hurt, even to her teentiest finger, why I’d be shot, burnt, cut to pieces an’ then swallered hole! I would, by ge-mently!”