Page:Edward Ellis--Alden the Pony Express Rider.djvu/137

 is, I’m on to dem Injins and dey’ll find it out; when dey wokes up Jethro Mix dey wokes up de wrong passenger and dere’s gwine to be trouble in de land.”

‘T never heard of firing at a spot where an enemy is not supposed to be,” ventured Richard Marvin, another member of the company, and somewhat of a wag.

“Who ’sposed he warn’t dere?” demanded Jethro. “I knowed he was dere ’cause he wasn’t dere—so I aimed at'de spot where he wasn’t ’cause I knowed he was dere. Doan’ you see?”

“I’m glad to have so clear an explanation,” gravely replied the gentleman; “but it seems to me there must have been a good deal of guesswork, for there was no way by which you could know of a certainty which way—the right or the left—he had moved.”

“No guesswork ’bout it,” loftily remarked Jethro.

“Could you see him as he lay in the grass?”

“Ob course not.”

“You certainly couldn’t hear him.”

“Ob course I couldn’t; who said I could?”

“Then how could you know where he really was?”