“May I go with you when you catch one?”
“Sure; you’ll have to learn to do it. I wonder if that old bull is dead; such Methuselahs are wonderfully tough.”
But the beast was dead, as we found on investigation; and as he lay there I realized more fully what a monster he was. Sam looked him over, shook his head, and said: “It is perfectly incredible. Do you know what you are?”
“What?”
“The most reckless man on earth.”
“I’ve never been accused of recklessness before.”
“Well, now you know that ‘reckless’ is the word for you. I forbade you meddling with a buffalo or leaving your hiding-place; but if you were going to disobey me, why didn’t you shoot a cow?”
“Because this was more knightly.”
“Knightly! Great Scott! This tenderfoot wants to play knight!” He laughed till he had to take hold of the bushes for support, and when he got his breath he cried: “The true frontiersman does what is most expedient, not what’s most knightly.”
“And I did that, too.”