"
I related the adventure in brief. Dinner being ready, the Colonel
set out the whiskey and cigars and told me to call on him that
afternoon, as he wished to have a private conversation with me.
I picked up the five scalps and started to dinner, and as I passed
by the kitchen I threw them under the negro cook's feet and told
him to cook them for dinner for my friend and me--referring to Jim
Beckwith. When he saw the scalps he exclaimed: "Laws a massa,
boss! whar you git dem skelps? Marse Meyers said dey wasn't an
Injun in fifty miles o' hyar."
While we were eating dinner, Jim said to me: "Don't you know them
fellers didn't think you'd ever come back?"
I asked him what fellows, and he said: "Why, those scouts. One of
them told me you was the d--est fool he ever saw in his life, to
go out scouting alone in a strange country, and that the Pah-Utes
would get you, sure."
I said I did not think it worth while to ask those scouts anything
about Indians or anything else, for I didn't think they had been
far enough from camp to learn anything themselves.
That afternoon when I was announced at the Colonel's tent, I was
met in a somewhat different manner by him to what I had been that
noon, for he raised the front of the tent and said: "Come right in
Drannan, why do you hesitate?"
After having a social chat with him and rehearsing to some extent
the fight which took place the night before between myself and the
five Pah-Utes, he proposed to make me chief of his scouts.
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