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The car stopped after sundry spluttering explosions and back-firings. "Nothing else for it, Gipsy. I must tramp back to Harlowe and get some petrol serves me right, I ought to have thought of it. Are you afraid of being left there with the car?" "Afraid!" She laughed. "Afraid of what, Johnny?" "Nothing, dear!"
The latter explained that the title to the land had come down to him in unbroken line from father to son through a period of 700 years, beginning with an ancestor who fought for it. "Let's fight for it again," suggested the tramp.
The tramp was now kneeling upon the prostrate boy's chest, at the same time trying to wrench a watch from Dick's vest pocket. "Keep still there, or I'll knock you on the bead!" cried the tramp, as, letting go of the watch chain, he clapped a dirty hand over Dick's mouth. "I won't kee keep still!" spluttered Dick. "Let me up!" "You will keep still if you know what is best for you.
But, Dicksie, your tramp is a hummer! I've tried to ride him down and wear him out and lose him, and, by Heaven, he turns up every time and has been of more use to me than two men." She put her hand on Whispering Smith's arm. "I told him if he would stop drinking he could be foreman here next season." Puss was putting up the lunch. "Why need you hurry away?" persisted Dicksie.
Blacky began to call in the way he does when he has discovered something and wants others to know about it. "Caw, caw, caaw, caaw, caw, caw, caaw!" screamed Blacky, as if greatly excited. Now Farmer Brown's boy, having no work to do that morning, had started for a tramp over the Green Meadows, hoping to see some of his little friends in feathers and fur.
Almost every one of these crisp November days found the two off on a tramp somewhere. And because Daniel Burton was careful always to accompany, never to lead, the boy's step gained day by day in confidence and his face in something very like interest. And always, for cold and stormy days, there were the books at home. Daniel Burton was not painting pictures pigment pictures these days.
We were seven hours on the tramp, along a good path, on which horses could get along well. The most difficult ascent was shortly after we left Uakinumu; but the path was good. The last hour of travelling was in a thunderstorm, with a regular tropical pour of rain.
His keenly set ears distinguished just then an even tramp among the abrupt sounds without, the feet of two or three men carrying weight. "He's here, Zur," said Dan, who held the feet, tenderly enough. "Aisy now, b'ys. It's not bar'ls ye're liftin'." They laid him down. "Fur up th' ridge he was: not many blue-coats furder an. That's true," in a loud, hearty tone.
The last three days of the journey, in fact, became a sort of "go-as-you-please" tramp. To inexperience and want of wise forethought may be set down most of the difficulties, hardships, and losses that befell that column on its 140-mile march south, whereof later.
It was found that the native teacher had been doing his best, but the chief was keen for all the advantages of a station, and was relying upon "Ma's" word to assist him. Next morning they again took to the canoe, but the water became so shallow that they had to land and tramp six miles to Amasu, passing the trenches where the natives sought to ambush the punitive force.
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