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Quashy," said the guide, shaking his head slowly, as, seated on his saddle, he rolled up a neat cigarette, "don't be too confident. You little know what sights these four walls have witnessed. True, this is not quite the season when one runs much risk of being starved to death, but the thing is not impossible."
After one long, anxious look round to see if any object should present itself which might raise the faintest echo of hope, he returned to the camp, and sat down on a mound with a profound sigh. "Chee' up, massa," said Quashy, raising his face, which glittered with his efforts to blow the fire into a glow. "You's git her in de long run."
Poor Quashy shut his mouth and his eyes it was as if three little lights had gone out while his dusky frame melted into its native gloom. No sound was to be heard on the sand-flats after that until about midnight, when the moon appeared on the horizon. Just then a sound was heard on the river. "Here they come," whispered Pedro. The sound increased. It was like a swirling, hissing noise.
At that moment there burst forth an ear-splitting, marrow-shrivelling blood-curdling yell, that seemed to rouse the entire universe into a state of wild insanity. There could be no mistaking it the peculiar, horrid, shrieking, only too familiar war-whoop of the painted savage! Quashy staggered back. He could not recover himself, for a log had caught his heel.
"Yes, massa," replied Quashy, "got lots ob eart' quaks in dem diggins. Ebery day, more or less, dey hab a few. Jest afore you come down dis mornin' I hab some conv'sashin' wid de landlord, an' he say he don' like de look ob t'ings." "Indeed, Quashy. Why not?" "'Cause it's gittin' too hot, he say, for de time ob year sulfry, he called it." "Sultry, you mean?"
"Das so, massa," broke in Quashy, who had listened with glittering eyes to Pedro's narrative, which of course was much more extended and full, "an' you's got no notion how we's banged about our poor shins among dese ruins afore we founded you. S'my b'lief but for de fires we'd nebber hab founded you at all. And dem scoundrils oh! dem scoundrils "
"That I know you will, Quashy. I can trust you. I'll order my horse im " "De hoss am at de door a'ready, miss. I order 'im afore I come here." Manuela could not restrain a little laugh at the cool presumption of her sable friend, as she ran out of the room to get ready. A few minutes more and the pair were cantering through the streets in the direction of the western suburbs of the town.
"When dey was partin', he says, says he, `Mis'r Amstrung, you mus' promise me not to 'tempt to meet my darter before leaving. I know'd, by de long silence and den by de way he speak dat Massa Lawrence no like dat, but at last he says, says he, `Well, kurnel, I do promise dat I'll make no 'tempt to meet wid her, an' den he hoed away. Now, Quashy, what you t'ink ob all dat?"
Don' you see, if dey wasn't fools dey wouldn't fight; 'cause fightin' can't prove nuffin', an' it can't do nuffin', 'cep' waste life an' money. No doubt," added the negro, with a meditative gaze at the ground, "when rubbers come at a feller he's boun' to fight, for why? he can't help it; or when Red Injin savages " "Have a care, Quashy, what you say about Indians. I've warned you once already."
"I'll try him with shot first," remarked Lawrence to Quashy, presenting his double-barrelled gun. At the distance of fifty yards or so the shot, when it entered the savage leader, was well scattered, so that horse and man were peppered all over.
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