“If you will come in, dinner is on the table, father,” said the girl. She had outgrown all curiosity concerning these wayfarers from the States; yet she gave the Missourian a smile, and to him that smile was an event.
Seated at the table the old man contented himself with seeing that his guests wanted for nothing, while his glance constantly shifted first from one to the other of the men and then on to the child.
Jim ate in stony silence, but his more social companion, once the first rigours of his hunger were appeased, was disposed to talk.
“Our finding him, elder,” indicating the child by a flourish of his knife, “was certainly mighty curious.”
“Yes?” inquiringly.
“It was four days back. Jim and me had come to a sandy valley, it was like a good many other valleys we'd seen, except that it had a little more sand and a little less of grass than some of the others, but, perhaps, the most singular thing about it was a flat-topped hill that stood right out on the plain; a wagon trail led up to the top of that hill, but just where the trail struck up the slope, we noticed that it was crossed and crossed again by another trail—not a wagon trail—which led in a circle about the hill.”
“Indians,” said Ephriam; he was deeply interested.
“But a many of them hosses was shod, elder, and Jim and me made it our business to go to the top of that hill; we found there had been some sort of a scuffle there; there was five dead men in a wash on one of the slopes, and we could see where three wagons had been emptied of their loads and burnt; but the uncommonest thing about it was those dead men; for, when we come to examine them, we found their pockets had been looked through and pretty well emptied, and no letters nor no nothing left to show who they was or where they come from. The next day we found this boy; he remembered about the hill and about the fight, said his pa had been killed there, and said it was the Indians done it.”
“What of that? It was all quite likely,” said Ephriam.
“But was it so blame likely?” remonstrated the Missourian. “Recollect a many of the hosses was shod.”