unt's speckled hen's eggs. Are there any real
Indians in these woods? I want some more gravy. Does the trees moving
make the wind blow? We had five puppies. What makes your nose so red,
Hank? My father has lots of money. Are the stars hot? I whipped Ed
Walker twice, Saturday. I don't like girls. You dassent catch toads
unless with a string. Do oxen make any noise? Why are oranges round?
Have you got beds to sleep on in this cave? Amos Murray has got six
toes. A parrot can talk, but a monkey or a fish can't. How many does it
take to make twelve?"

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?"

"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 kidnaped 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 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