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We were a marked party, by reason of the doctor's lameness and Skenedonk's appearance. The Oneida, during his former sojourn in France, had been encouraged to preserve the novelty of his Indian dress. As I had nothing to give him in its place it did not become me to find fault. And he would have been more conspicuous with a cocked hat on his bare red scalp, and knee breeches instead of buckskins.
When the afternoon waned and the shade from the western wall crept into the oasis, August Naab came from his cabin clad in buckskins, with a large blue Colt swinging handle outward from his left hip. He ordered his sons to replenish the fire which had been built in the circle, and when the fierce-eyed Indians gathered round the blaze he called to his women to bring meat and drink.
As a fine specimen of the true English yeoman, I have met with few to equal, if any to surpass him, and he looked the character as well as he acted it, till within a few years, when the strong man was bowed by bodily infirmity. About twenty-six years ago, in his dress costume of a blue coat and yellow buckskins, a finer sample of John Bullism you would rarely see.
"'Tis th' Gineral's jooty to luk out f'r his throops, not Danny Morgan's or mine," replied the big rifleman in disgust. The column halted. I signalled my men to follow me and hastened along the flanks under a fire of chaff: "Look at young buckskins! There go Morgan's macaronis! God help the red-coats this day! How's the scalp trade, son?"
They reached the thicket in which they had hidden their clothes and rifles, and found them untouched. "Queer how much confidence clothes give to a feller!" exclaimed Seth Cole, as he slipped on his buckskins. "It's so," said Henry, "and it's so, too, that you're not a whole man until you get back your rifle."
My Indians had eaten, and were touching up their paint when Major Parr came up, wearing a magnificent new suit of fringed buckskins, and ordered us to guide the rifle battalion. A moment later our conch-horn boomed out its thrilling and melodious warning. Far in the rear I heard the drums and bugle-horns of the light infantry sounding the general.
The gentleman of the buckskins was the proprietor, with whose bailiff Harry Wakefield had dealt, or was in the act of dealing. "Thou art in good luck, my canny Scot," said Mr. Ireby, "to have spoken to me, for I see thy cattle have done their day's work, and I have at my disposal the only field within three miles that is to be let in these parts."
While they ate something we washed out their guns, and at intervals near the places where each man must stand behind the waggons we piled little heaps of powder and bullets upon buckskins and pieces of canvas laid on the ground; also we did all we could to strengthen our defences still further by binding ox-hides over the waggon wheels and thrusting in more thorns between them.
Not so; the little pintos, buckskins, bays, and chestnuts dashed to the door and stopped short in a full gallop; as a bit of staccato equestrianism it was superb. And then the wherefore of all this dashing horsemanship, this curveting, prancing, galloping revival of knightly tourney effects was apparent—Judith Rodney had opened post-office.
In fringed and greasy buckskins, with long hair and swarthy faces, their feet noiseless in moccasins, they were so much of the wild, that it needed the words, "Trappers from Laramie," to reassure the doctor and make Leff put down his rifle. The leader, a lean giant, bearded to the cheek bones and with lank locks of hair falling from a coon-skin cap, gave his introduction briefly.
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