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Cowan and Mrs. Harrod were standing alone. For there was little of fear in those three. "Shucks!" said Mrs. Cowan, "I reckon it's that Jim Ray shooting at a mark," and she began to pick nettles again. "Vimmen is a shy critter," remarked Swein Poulsson, coming up. I had a shrewd notion that he had run with the others. "Wimmen!" Mrs. Cowan fairly roared. "Wimmen!
In the morning we broke camp and started off for the strange place which we hoped to capture. A hundred miles it was across the trackless wilds, and each man was ordered to carry on his back provisions for four days only. "Herr Gott!" cried Swein Poulsson, from the bottom of a flatboat, whence he was tossing out venison flitches, "four day, und vat is it ve eat then?"
"I haf one great fright," said he. "Send him into the common with the women in yere place, Mis' McChesney," growled Cowan, who was loading. "By tam!" said Swein Poulsson, leaping to his feet, "I vill stay here und fight. I am prave once again." Stooping down, he searched under the bed, pulled out his rifle, powdered the pan, and flying to the other port, fired.
In an instant we were down on our knees on the hard dirt floor, and there was a man's foot in a moccasin! We both grabbed it and pulled, bringing to life a person with little blue eyes and stiff blond hair. "Swein Poulsson!" exclaimed Polly Ann, giving him an involuntary kick, "may the devil give ye shame!" Swein Poulsson rose to a sitting position and clasped his knees in his hands.
Scenting a sensation, I hurried along the wooded trace at a dog trot, and when I came in sight of the cabin there was Mrs. Cowan sitting on the step, holding in her long but motherly arms something bundled up in nettle linen, while Tom stood sheepishly by, staring at it. "Shucks," Mrs. Cowan was saying loudly, "I reckon ye're as little use to-day as Swein Poulsson, standin' there on one foot.
I am choost like an ox for three days, und chew grass. Prairie grass, is it?" "Mo pas capab', Michie," said the cook, with a terrified roll of his white eyes. "Herr Gott!" cried Swein Poulsson, "I am red face. Aber Herr Gott, I thank thee I am not a nigger. Und my hair is bristles, yes. Let us in the kitchen go."
Swein Poulsson had become a hero, nor was he willing to lose any of the glamour which was a hero's right. "You did not see me safe James, no? I vill tell you Joost how." It never leaked out that Swein was first of all under the bed, for Polly Ann and Bill Cowan and myself swore to keep the secret.
"I am come to get something for the Colonel's breakfast," said I, pushing past the slave, through the open doorway. Swein Poulsson followed, and here I struck another contradiction in his strange nature. He helped me light the fire in the great stone chimney-place, and we soon had a pot of hominy on the crane, and turning on the spit a piece of buffalo steak which we found in the larder.
At that Cowan left his post and snatched the rifle from Poulsson's hands. "Ye're but wasting powder," he cried angrily. "Then, by tam, I am as vell under the bed," said Poulsson. "Vat can I do?" I had it. "Dig!" I shouted; and seizing the astonished Cowan's tomahawk from his belt I set to work furiously chopping at the dirt beneath the log wall. "Dig, so that James can get under."
Is it America?" demanded Poulsson, while the others looked on, some laughing, some serious. "And vich citizen are you since you are ours? You vill please to give me one carrot of tobacco." And he thrust the scrip under the clerk's nose. The clerk stared at the uneven lettering on the scrip with disdain. "Money," he exclaimed scornfully, "she is not money.
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