“By George, that was rough!” he cried, as he picked himself up. “I wonder where the boy is?”
Charley was lying about twenty feet from him, too much stunned to wonder back in return.
At this moment the light blazed forth with great brilliancy from the eyes of the giant.
Cries were heard from within the house, and the sound of hurrying footsteps came to Hale’s ears.
The door was flung open.
Half a dozen men stood in the wide hallway.
They were all armed in a rough and ready fashion, having apparently taken what weapons that chanced to come first to their hands.
Well, that huge old prairie traveler came very near scaring the life out of them.
As they flung open the door his powerful bright eyes flooded them with light, and if they had been childishly superstitious to any degree they might have thought that some of the giants of their nursery rhymes, the ones with eyes of flame and breath of smoke, had come to pay them a visit, and that the thundering noise with which he announced his advent was merely his style of tapping for admittance.
They yelled one excited yell of wholesale terror.