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The words did not sound like a joke, and there was little humor in the grim face. "'We' means Jondo, Banney, a young fellow from Kentucky " Uncle Esmond began. "Humph! Banney's father carried a gun at Fort Dearborn in 1812. I thought that young fellow came here for military service," the colonel commented, testily. "Rather say he came for adventure," Esmond Clarenden suggested.
As we topped a low swell at the bottom of whose long slide lay the little oasis we were seeking, we came upon Bill Banney's pony lying dead across the trail. And near it Bill himself, with bloated face and bleared eyes, muttering half-coherently: "Water-hole! Poison! Don't drink!"
The trail crept close about its base, as if it would cling lovingly to this one shadow-making thing amid all the open, blaring, sun-bound miles stretching out on either side of it. As Beverly and I were riding in front of Mat's wagon, of which we had elected ourselves the special guardians, Rex Krane came up alongside Bill Banney's team in front of us.
If I failed to see them this morning, I meant to run back to the parade-ground and play leap-frog myself with my cousin Beverly, who wanted proof for most of Bill Banney's stories. Beverly was growing wise and lanky for his age. I was still chubby, and in most things innocent, and inclined to believe all that I heard, or I should not have been taken in by that fish story.
And so they found me at twilight, as a tired child about to fall asleep. They did not cry out, nor fall on my neck, nor weep. But Bill Banney's strong arms carried me tenderly away. Water, food, unbound swollen limbs, bathed in the warm Arkansas flow, soft grass for a bed, and the eyes of the big plainsman, my childhood idol, gentle as a girl's, looking unutterable things into my eyes.
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