of human weakness that he answered their polite query as to "what they
might call him," by intimating that his name was "Red Jim,"--a title of
achievement by which he was generally known, which for the present must
suffice them. But during the repast that followed this was shortened to
"Mister Jim," and even familiarly by the elders to plain "Jim." Only
the young girl habitually used the formal prefix in return for the "Miss
Phoebe" that he called her.
With three such sympathetic and unexperienced auditors the gloomy
embarrassment of Red Jim was soon dissipated, although it could hardly
be said that he was generally communicative. Dark tales of Indian
warfare, of night attacks and wild stampedes, in which he had always
taken a prominent part, flowed freely from his lips, but little else
of his past history or present prospects. And even his narratives of
adventure were more or less fragmentary and imperfect in detail.
"You woz saying," said the farmer, with slow, matter of fact, New
England deliberation, "ez how you guessed you woz beguiled amongst the
Injins by your Mexican partner, a pow'ful influential man, and yet you
woz the only one escaped the gen'ral slarterin'. How came the Injins to
kill HIM,--their friend?"
"They didn't," returned Jim, with ominously averted eyes.
"What became of him?" continued the farmer.
Red Jim shadowed his eyes with his hand, and cast a dark glance of
scrutiny out of the doors and windows. The young girl perceived it with
timid, fascinated concern, and said hurriedly:--
"Don't ask him, father! Don't you see he mustn't tell?"
"Not when spies may be hangin' round, and doggin' me at every step,"
said Red Jim, as if reflecting, with another furtive glance towards
the already fading prospect without. "They've sworn to revenge him," he
added moodily.
A momentary silence followed. The farmer coughed slightly, and looked
dubiously at his wife. But the two women had already exchanged feminine
glances of sympathy for this evident slayer of traitors, and were
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