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Updated: May 26, 2025
"Rube an' me have been discussin' it," she said. "Guess we've settled to leave the farm, an' buy a new place around some big city. I don't rightly know how the boy 'll take it. Y' see, Seth's mighty hard to change, an' he's kind o' fixed on this place. Y' see, he's young, an' Rube an' me's had a longish spell. We'd be pleased to take it easy now. Eh, old man?"
Rube guessed by his serious judicial manner that he was passing a sentence of punishment upon him. "It's a pity none o' you c'n understand plain, straight-forward English," he protested. "I c'd explain in a jiffy." "Eh?" cried the medicine man who had addressed him in the Sioux, "you c'n speak English yourself, can you, young 'un?" Rube looked across at him in astonishment.
Ma put the end of her pen in her mouth and eyed her man. Rube scratched his head and smoked hard. Neither spoke. At last the woman jerked out an impatient inquiry. "Well?" she exclaimed. Rube removed his pipe from his lips with great deliberation and eased himself in his chair. "You've located the name of the farm on top, an' the State, an' the date?" he inquired, by way of gaining time.
An' wasn't she a raal beauty?" exclaimed the little Irishman, with an earnestness in his manner that set the trappers roaring again. "Pish!" cried Rube, who had now finished loading, "yur a set o' channering fools; that's what 'ee ur. Who palavered about a post? I've got an ole squaw as well's the Injun. She'll hold the thing for this child she will." "Squaw! You a squaw?"
"It's like this. You won't be mad, now? We gotta do these sort of things to hold our own. Well, here's the show, a regular movin' picture except for file talkin'. Here's a big rube comin' along, hayseed stickin' out all over, hands like hams an' feet like Mississippi gunboats. He'd make half as much again as me in size an' he's young, too.
He found the place without much difficulty, and had proof in some detached fragments of moss and lichen that Rube had been here in advance of him, and had been able to look down into the eagles' nest, where the female was even now sitting unconcerned on her eggs. Kiddie did not disturb her, as Rube had probably done. Instead, he searched for signs of Rube himself.
The third day we war sitting by the side of a stream, eating a prairie-dog as we had trapped, when Rube stopped eating suddenly, and said, 'Listen! "I threw myself down and put my ear to the ground, and, sure enough, could hear the gallop of horses. 'Injins, says I, and chucks a lot of wet sand and gravel over the fire, which was fortunately a small one.
"Guess that rattlesnake we killed had done with family life a long while ago," said Kiddie. "Anyhow, I'm curious to know what critter it was that sprang this trap." "Mebbe he shoved his nose inter one of the others," suggested Rube. Kiddie led the way unerringly among the forest trees. His traps had all been visited by wild animals.
I let the blood run till the sleeve was soaked and dripping, then Rube tore off a strip from his shirt and bandaged my arm up tight. We rolled the sleeve in a ball and threw it down, then took a turn, made a zigzag or two to puzzle the brute, and then went on our line again. For another ten minutes we could hear the barking get nearer and nearer, and then it stopped all of a sudden.
And later, when we were once more in our Pullman, and I had gotten interested in a game of cards with Milly and Stringer and his wife, the Rube came marching up to me with a very red face. "Con, I reckon some of the boys have stolen my our grips," said he. "What?" I asked, blankly.
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