“Yep. Well, every time Tom gets mad with the folks at home, or sore on the school he goes to, or the teachers, he writes me and says he’s going to run away and come out here. And he wants to know what kind of guns and ammunition he’ll have to buy, and if he’ll have to wear a bowie-knife and two pistols stuck in his belt. He, he!”
“He must be a blockhead,” said Chet, in disgust. “What does he think Silver Run is?”
“Well, I tell you,” proceeded Digby, “it’s partly my fault. At first I told him the truth—that we had churches and schools and a circulating library, and folks took a bath Saturday nights, if they didn’t oftener, and wore boiled shirts on Sunday; and that a man who wore a pistol in his belt would be taken in by the constable and examined as to his sanity.
“But that didn’t suit Tom—oh, no! He said he knew I was kidding him.”
“He did?”
“That’s what! So I got sick of being disbelieved, and I began to write him the sort of stuff he wanted. I told him about the Comanches attacking the town and we beating ’em off with great slaughter.”
“Dig Fordham! How could you? Why, we haven’t seen a bad Indian in years.”
“Never mind. That’s what Tom wanted me to tell him. I told him all the miners wore red flannel shirts, and went about with their pants tucked into their boot-tops, and that they wore pistols in their belts, and bowie-knives in their boots— By the way, Chet; what is a bowie-knife?”
Chet laughed. “A kind of long-bladed hunting knife, ground to an edge on both sides of the point, and invented by Colonel James Bowie, of Texas. I got that out of an encyclopaedia.”
“Well, Tom knows all about ’em. I hope he comes out here some time, togged up in the way he thinks we dress at Silver Run. If he does, I know he’d scare a corral full of ponies into fits!” and Dig went off into another spasm of laughter.