“But how are ye goin’ to do it? Tell us that, old hoss!”
“’Ee see this, do ’ee?” asked the trapper, holding out a small fruit of the cactus pitahaya, which he had just plucked and cleaned of its spikelets.
“Ay, ay,” cried several voices, in reply.
“’Ee do, do ’ee? Wal; ’ee see ’tain’t half as big as the Injun’s squash. ’Ee see that, do ’ee?”
“Oh, sartinly! Any fool can see that.”
“Wal; s’pose I plug it at sixty, plump centre?”
“Wagh!” cried several, with shrugs of disappointment.
“Stick it on a pole, and any o’ us can do that,” said the principal speaker. “Here’s Barney could knock it off wid his owld musket. Couldn’t you, Barney?”
“In truth, an’ I could thry,” answered a very small man, leaning upon a musket, and who was dressed in a tattered uniform that had once been sky-blue. I had already noticed this individual with some curiosity, partly struck with his peculiar costume, but more particularly on account of the redness of his hair, which was the reddest I had ever seen. It bore the marks of a severe barrack discipline—that is, it had been shaved, and was now growing out of his little round head short and thick, and coarse in the grain, and of the colour of a scraped carrot. There was no possibility of mistaking Barney’s nationality. In trapper phrase, any fool could have told that.
What had brought such an individual to such a place? I asked this question, and was soon enlightened. He had been a soldier in a frontier post, one of Uncle Sam’s “Sky-blues.” He had got tired of pork and pipe-clay, accompanied with a too liberal allowance of the hide. In a word, Barney was a deserter. What his name was, I know not, but he went under the appellation of O’Cork—Barney O’Cork.