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One thing more: will you help us?" "I reckon I'll stay here to see the thing out," answered Williamson. Edwards made a mental note of the frontiersman's evasive answer. Jim had, meanwhile, made the acquaintance of a young minister, John Christy by name, who had lost his sweetheart in one of the Chippewa raids, and had accompanied the Williamson expedition in the hope he might rescue her.
We must carry the news to Bexar." "It's funny there are no scouts around," was the old frontiersman's comment. "They ought to be on the watch." But none of the Texan soldiers were on guard, the greater portion of them being in attendance at a Mexican fandango in the town, never suspecting the attack so close at hand.
Thar's a fine spring under yon curly birch, an' I fetched along a leg of deer-meat. Hungry, little 'un?" He had worked hard all day steering the rafts, yet Nell had seen him smiling at her many times during the journey, and he had found time before the early start to arrange for her a comfortable seat. There was now a solicitude in the frontiersman's voice that touched her.
Don't you see how they skinned every branch? That's why the cattlemen hate 'em! Ford will be on the Rim Mesas now. Why; anything wrong?" She did not remember till afterwards how it was she had met both his hands with her own as she repeated the old frontiersman's report. She knew, if time stopped and storm split the welkin, it would be all the same.
How long they were in passing we forgot to note; it seemed like an age. When daylight came the few stragglers yet to be seen fell under the unerring aim of the frontiersman's rifle. We were lucky, but our neighbors in camp did not escape loss. Some were detained for days, gathering up their scattered stock, while others were unable to find their teams. Some of the animals never were recovered.
"How quiet!" exclaimed Kate, suddenly breaking the silence that followed the frontiersman's answer. "Beautiful!" impetuously said Nell, looking up at Joe. A quick flash from his gray eyes answered her; he did not speak; indeed he had said little to her since the start, but his glance showed her how glad he was that she felt the sweetness and content of this wild land.
The hollow mentioned was nearly quarter of a mile away, yet so sharp were the old frontiersman's eyes that he had noted a peculiar moving of the upper branches of the brushwood before him, as if some large animal was tramping around, browsing on such tender shoots as the snow had not covered.
"You are a true frontiersman's wife; you have chosen as I should have done. It is a choice of evils; but God has blessed and protected us since we came out into the wilderness we will trust and confide in him now. At any rate," he went on more cheerfully, "there is no fear of the enemy starving us out.
"Yes, you bet your life they do!" answered one of the younger men, lapsing into the frontiersman's language, from the force of his convictions. "Look behind you at those trees, Jack," said Major Worth. "Can you see anything? No! And if there were an Apache behind each one of them, we should never know it." We all turned and peered into the black darkness which surrounded us.
Thus it was that "Barker's" became, during the construction period, an important point, and the frontiersman's name came to figure on time-tables. Meanwhile the place passed through a process of evolution which would have delighted Darwin. In the party of engineers which first camped there was Sinclair, and it was by his advice that the contractors selected it for division headquarters.
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