Page:From the West to the West.djvu/71



mock seriousness. "The first night we were in camp, after we had washed the dishes, it occurred to me to write each teamster's name and paste it to the bottom of his plate. I didn't know the real name of one of 'em from Adam's, so I wrote them down as Scotty, Limpy, Yank, Shorty, Sawed-off, and so on. We didn't intend to perpetrate a misfit, but a joke, and we struck both. Scotty got the correct title, though it merely happened so. But you just watch 'em! Limpy's as straight as an Indian; Sawed-off stands six feet two in his socks; Lengthy is no taller when he stands up than when he lies down; Yank is a characteristic slave-owner; and Sambo is an ingrained abolitionist!"

"We couldn't have made such a lot o' misfits if we had tried a week," said Mary. "But the men all think Hal did it; so the suspicion doesn't fall on us; and you get the credit for being somewhat of a wag, Mr. Hal."

"It's nothing new for men or boys to take the credit for what their sisters do," said Jean, as Hal strode away, satisfied that in protecting his sisters from a piece of folly, by accepting it as his own, he was acting the part of a man. "Adam set the example; and where would Herschel have been if he hadn't had a sister?"

"Adam might have been in a box if he couldn't have had Eve," laughed Mar jorie; "for there would then have been nobody to raise Cain."

"Or the Ranger family," added Jean.

Several days of tedious, laborious travel brought the wanderers into an open, sparsely timbered, almost unsettled part of the State of Missouri. The snow and sleet gave way to brighter skies, the roads and sloughs were drying up, and the higher grounds were gradually arraying themselves in robes of green and gold.

"Here is vacant land, and lots of it," said Mary, as she viewed the virgin prospect of a mighty settlement in