While the majority still retained their posts, keenly vigilant, others of the little band removed the dead into one place and ministered to the wants of the wounded, to the best of their ability. It was a sad and heart-rending task, but their own peril was such that they had no time for bewailing their comrade’s sad fate, and then once more they returned to their posts.
For nearly an hour all was silence within the little corral, and even the sorely wounded, despite their agony, heroically suppressed their moans of pain, lest they should tend to weaken the nerves of the defenders still left. And the latter were far too deeply occupied with their own thoughts upon the impending peril to feel like conversing.
But, at the end of this time, there was one who could maintain silence no longer—the old guide, Tom Maxwell. A voluble talker, he seemed totally at a loss while his tongue was idle, and, unlike most people, he appeared to think better and more closely while dilating upon some entirely foreign subject.
Upon one side of him was stationed Major Calhoun; upon the other, the young man, Buenos Ayres. It was with them, either or both, that he spoke.
“Wuss’n a Quaker meetin’, this is, ’specially a’ter sich lively doin’s as was jist now. ’Pears like I’d bu’st ef I was to hold in any longer; the words scroudge each other so’t they hain’ got room to kick in. What d’you think o’ the sitivation, any how, boss?”
“It’s bad—very bad!” gloomily responded Calhoun.
“That’s true as gospil; but then ’tain’t quite so bad as it mought be ef it was wuss, anyhow, which is a gre’t consolation. I thought I was once in the wuss fix ’at ever could be hatched up, when I was in the middle o’ a bayou, down in Texas, with a passel o’ red-skins on ’ither hand, an’ three in a canoe, cluss ahind me. But then a corntwisted alligator poked his nose right up from the water, against mine, which mixed things up a little more so.
“But I div’—the canoe ran smack inside the critter’s mouth—thar was a scrunch, an’ then mebbe thar wasn’t some splashin’! I swum in ’mongst the reeds, while the reds was flustrated, an’ so fooled ’em. All of which goes to prove that we ain’t cotched yit.”
“Are you sure that Dusky Dick is with these devils, to-night? I have neither seen nor heard him.”
“Bet yer life he is. But he hain’t nobody’s fool, an’ knows well enough that ef he should show his ugly mug, it’d bring a dozen bullets a’ter it. Most like, he’s painted up like one o’ the rest; but he’s thar, shure. I smell him, I tell ye.