I was not able to answer this question positively, so we made sure that there was no life in my former foe, and Hawkins said: “He treated me pretty badly, this old brute; a cow would have been gentler, but I suppose you can’t expect such an old soldier to be lady-like. Let us go to my poor horse.”
We found him in a pitiable condition, torn so that his entrails protruded, and groaning with agony. Sam loaded, and gave the poor creature the shot that ended his suffering, and then he removed the saddle and bridle, saying: “I’ll be my own horse, and put these on my back.”
“Where will you get another horse?” I asked.
“That’s the least of my troubles; I’ll find one unless I’m mistaken.”
“Yes. The buffaloes are here; they’ve begun travelling southward, and soon we’ll see the mustangs, I’m sure of that.”
“Sure; you’ll have to learn to do it. I wonder if that old bull is dead; such Methuselahs are wonderfully tough.”
But the beast was dead, as we found on investigation; and as he lay there I realized more fully what a monster he was. Sam looked him over, shook his head, and said: “It is perfectly incredible. Do you know what you are?”
“I’ve never been accused of recklessness before.”
“Well, now you know that ‘reckless’ is the word for you. I forbade you meddling with a buffalo or leaving your hiding-place; but if you were going to disobey me, why didn’t you shoot a cow?”
“Knightly! Great Scott! This tenderfoot wants to play knight!” He laughed till he had to take hold of the bushes for support, and when he got his breath he cried: “The true frontiersman does what is most expedient, not what’s most knightly.”
“That big bull has much more flesh on him than a cow.”
Sam looked at me mockingly. “Much more flesh!” he cried. “And this youngster shot a bull for his flesh! Why, boy, this old stager had surely eighteen or twenty years on his head, and his flesh is as hard as leather, while the cow’s flesh is fine and tender. All this shows again what a greenhorn you are. Now go get your horse, and we’ll load him with all the meat he can carry.”
In spite of Sam’s mocking me, that night as I stood unobserved in the door of the tent where he and Stone and Parker sat by their fire I heard Sam say: “Yes, sir, he’s going to be a genuine Westerner; he’s born one. And how strong he is! Yesterday he drew our great ox-cart alone and single-handed. Now to-day I owe him my life. But we won’t let him know what we think of him.”