“Now, lad, get in,” said Redhand, whose usually quiet eye appeared to gleam at the near prospect of a combat with the fierce and much-dreaded monster of the Far West.
“All right, mes garçons,” replied Gibault; “hand me mine gun; I vill valk on the bank, an’ see vich vay hims go—so, adieu!”
With a powerful push, he sent the light craft into the stream, and, turning on his heel, entered the woods.
The others at once commenced paddling up the river with energetic strokes.
“He’s a wild feller that,” remarked Bounce, after they had proceeded some distance and reached a part of the stream where the current was less powerful. “I’d bet my rifle he’s git the first shot at Caleb; I only hope he’ll not fall in with him till we git ashore, else it may go hard with him.”
“So it may,” said Waller; “if it goes as hard wi’ Gibault as it did wi’ my old comrade, Bob Swan, it’ll be no fun, I guess.”
“What happened to him?” asked March, who was ever open-eared for stories.
“Oh, it was nothing very curious, but I guess it was ‘onconvanient,’ as them coons from Ireland says. Bob Swan went—he did—away right off alone, all by hisself, to shoot a grisly with a old musket as wasn’t fit to fire powder, not to speak o’ ball. He was sich a desprit feller, Bob Swan was, that he cut after it without takin’ time to see wot wos in the gun. I follered him as fast as I could, hollerin’ for him to stop and see if he wos loaded; but I calc’late he was past stoppin’. Wall, he comes up wi’ the bar suddently, and the bar looks at him, and he looks at it. Then he runs up, claps the gun to his shoulder, and pulls the trigger; but it wos a rusty old lock, an’ no fire came. There was fire come from the bar’s eyes, though, I do guess! It ran at him, an’ he ran away. Of course Caleb soon came up, an’ Bob primed as he ran an’ wheeled about, stuck the muzzle of the old musket right into Caleb’s mouth, and fired. He swallered the whole charge, that bar did, as if it had been a glass o’ grog, and didn’t he cough some? Oh no! an’ he roared, too, jist like this—”
Big Waller, in the excitement of his narrative, was about to give a vocal illustration, when Bounce suddenly extinguished him by clapping his hand on his mouth.
“Hist! you wild buffalo,” he said, “you’ll frighten off all the bars within ten miles of us, if you raise your horrable trumpet!”