“They don’t know,” said I, “poor devils, they don’t know. They were raised on farms and in the cities.”
Johnny had said nothing. His handsome face looked very sombre in the firelight.
“Jim,” said he, “we’re due for a trip to-night; but I 319 want you to promise me one thing–just keep these people here, and feed them up until we get back. Tell them I’ve got a job for them. Will you do it?”
I tried to pump Johnny as to his intentions, but could get nothing out of him; and so promised blindly. About two o’clock I was roused from my sleep by a soft moving about. Thrusting my head from the tent I made out the dim figures of our horsemen, mounted, and moving quietly away down the trail.
320CHAPTER XXXIV
THE PRISONERS
I had no great difficulty in persuading the immigrants to rest over.
“To tell you the truth,” the narrator confided to me, “I don’t know where we’re going. We have no money, We’ve got to get work somehow. I don’t know now why we came.”
His name, he told me, was George Woodruff; he had been a lawyer in a small Pennsylvania town; his total possessions were now represented by the remains of his ox team, his wagon, and the blankets in which he slept. The other man was his brother Albert, and the woman his sister-in-law.
“We started with four wagons and a fine fit-out of supplies,” he told me–“food enough to last two years. This is what we have left. The cattle aren’t in bad shape now though; and they are extra fine stock. Perhaps I can sell them for a little.”