“Is this heah Raymond's settlement?” the latter demanded, reining in his mule before the ranch house door.
“Yes,” answered Ephriam. “Won't you light down?” he added. He was a kindly, venerable man, with a patriarchal beard and long, grey hair; there was more than a touch of the ministerial in the decent black broadcloth suit he wore; the fact that he was collarless, and that his trousers were tucked in at the tops of his heavy boots, did not detract in the least from his palpable pulpit dignity.
“We will, elder, if it's agreeable to you, and we'd admire to fill up on kitchen victuals.” And the red-whiskered man drew the back of his hand across his bearded lips.
“You're just in time,” said Ephriam smiling.
“I told you, Jim! Elder, I smelt 'em from the moment we broke out of the hills.” He lifted the boy down as he spoke, and making a common movement with Jim, swung himself stiffly from the saddle; a half-grown boy had appeared from the direction of the corrals, and at a sign from Ephriam led away the mules.
“Are there no more of your party coming?” said the old man.
“What's left of us is right heah, elder,” answered the Missourian; then he saw that Ephriam was regarding Benny curiously. “Oh, him? You allow he don't belong to either Jim or me—and you're right, elder, for he don't.”
Ephriam turned on him with unexpected sternness at this.
“Perhaps that is your excuse for his condition!” and he pointed to the child, whose white, scared face wore a preternatural look of age and suffering; and whose tattered clothes scarcely covered his pinched little body; while his hands and bare feet were cruelly torn and bruised.
“Well, sir, I admit he ain't much to brag on, and his looks is a scandal to this outfit. We picked him up only four days back; he says he'd run off from the redskins. He'd most starved to death.”