Then we had supper; and he filled his mouth full of bacon and bread and gravy, and began to talk. He made a during-dinner speech something like this: "Gee whiz! I like this fine! I never camped out before, but I had a pet possum once and I was nine on my last birthday . Say? Are there any real Indians in these woods? mmm . I hate to go to school . I want some more gravy . My friend Walter was born without elbows! Hey, Hank! What makes your nose so red? Did you know my father has lots of money, and he once . Hey Hank! Do oxen make any noise? I sure don't like girls . and why are oranges round? Have you guys got beds to sleep on in this cave or what? I heard that Amos Murray has got six toes on each foot and eat bugs for breakfast! A parrot can talk, can a monkey talk, Hank? Can he, Hank? Hank?
Hank?
Hank?
Every few minutes he would remember that he was a pesky redskin, and pick up his stick rifle and tiptoe to the mouth of the cave to rubber for the scouts of the hated paleface. Now and then he would let out a war WHOOP that made Old Hank the Trapper, shiver. That boy had Bill terrorized from the start.
"Red Chief," says I to the kid, "would you like to go home?" "Aw, what for?" says he. "I don't have any fun at home. I hate to go to school. I like to camp out. You won't take me back home again, Snake-eye, will you?" "Hm? Not right away," says I. "We'll stay here in the cave a while." "All right!" says he. "That'll be fine. I never had such fun in all my life!" We went to bed about eleven o'clock. We spread down some wide blankets and quilts and put Red Chief between us. We weren't afraid he'd run away. He kept us awake for three hours, jumping up and reaching for his rifle and screeching: "Hist! pard," in mine and Bill's ears, as the fancied crackle of a twig or the rustle of a leaf revealed to his young imagination the stealthy approach of the outlaw band. At last, I fell into a troubled sleep, and dreamed that I had been kidnapped and chained to a tree by a ferocious pirate with red hair.
Just at daybreak, I was awakened by a series of awful screams from Bill. They weren't yells, or howls, or shouts, or whoops, or yawps, such as you'd expect from a manly set of vocal organs-they were simply indecent, terrifying, humiliating screams, such as women emit when they see ghosts or caterpillars. It's such an awful thing to hear a strong, desperate, fat man scream incontinently in a cave at daybreak. I jumped up to see what the matter was. Red Chief was sitting on Bill's chest, with one hand twined in Bill's hair. In the other, he had the sharp case-knife we used for slicing bacon; and he was industriously and realistically trying to take Bill's scalp! according to the sentence that had been pronounced upon him the evening before.
I got the knife away from the kid and made him lie down again. But, for that moment, Bill's spirit was broken. He laid down on his side of the bed, but he never closed an eye again in sleep as long as that boy was with us. I dozed off for a while, but along toward sun-up I remembered that Red Chief had said I was to be burned at the stake at the rising of the sun. I wasn't nervous or afraid; but I sat up and lit my pipe and leaned against a rock.
