“Hallo! That’s a lie!” shouted the man, with another strange, wild laugh. “You’ve taken a mouthful out of my flask; not taken it, certainly, but it went over your tongue all the same. Where do you come from? The beast ain’t your’n.”
“Mr Neal’s,” answered I.
“See it is by the brand. But what brings you here from Mr Neal’s? It’s a good seventy mile to his plantation, right across the prairie. Ain’t stole the horse, have you?”
“Lost my way—four days—eaten nothing.”
These words were all I could articulate. I was too weak to talk.
“Four days without eatin’!” cried the man, with a laugh like the sharpening of a saw, “and that in a Texas prairie, and with islands on all sides of you! Ha! I see how it is. You’re a gentleman—that’s plain enough. I was a sort of one myself once. You thought our Texas prairies was like the prairies in the States. Ha, ha! And so you didn’t know how to help yourself. Did you see no bees in the air, no strawberries on the airth?”
“Bees? Strawberries?” repeated I.
“Yes, bees, which live in the hollow trees. Out of twenty trees there’s sure to be one full of honey. So you saw no bees, eh? Perhaps you don’t know the creturs when you see ’em? Ain’t altogether so big as wild-geese or turkeys. But you must know what strawberries are, and that they don’t grow upon the trees.”
All this was spoken in the same sneering, savage manner as before, with the speaker’s head half turned over his shoulder, while his features were distorted into a contemptuous grin.