On the Pampas; Or, The Young SettlersHenty, G. A. (George Alfred)
General
On the Pampas; Or, The Young Settlers
Henty, G. A. (George Alfred)
Pampas (Argentina) -- Juvenile fiction
'Well, I feel just about tired out,' Rube said; 'just as if I had
walked a hundred miles right on end. I've been a fool again, Seth,
sure enough; but I've given some of them goss, that's a comfort.
I'll just take a sleep for a few hours, and then we'll see about
this business. 'Hello, there!' he shouted in Spanish; 'water.' For
awhile no one attended to him; but he continued to shout, and I
joined him, so that the men in the next room were obliged to leave
off their talk to do as we wanted them. One of them got up and took
a large copper pan, filled it with water from a skin, and placed it
down between us; and then giving me a hearty kick--even then he did
not dare kick Rube--went back to his pillow. It took some trouble
and much rolling over before we could get so as to get our mouths
over the pan to drink. When we had satisfied our thirst we rolled
over again, made ourselves as comfortable as we could under the
circumstances--which warn't saying much--and in a short time were
both asleep, for we had only been four hours in bed for two nights.
I was pretty well accustomed to sleep on the ground, and I slept
without waking for nearly seven hours; for when I did so I saw at
once it was nearly sunset. I can't say it was an agreeable waking,
that; for I felt as if my shoulders were out of joint, and that I
had two bands of red-hot iron round my wrists. My first move was to
roll over and have another drink. Then I sat up and looked round.
Rube was sitting up, looking at me.
'So you are awake, Seth?'
'Yes,' said I. 'Are you all right now, Rube?'
'As right as can be,' Rube said in his ordinary cheerful tone;
'except that I feel as if a fellow was sawing away at my ankles and
wrists with a blunt knife.'
'That's about the state of my wrists,' I said.
'I don't mind my wrists so much,' he said; 'it's my feet bothers
me. I shall be such a time before I can walk.'
'You needn't bother about that, Rube,' said I. 'It isn't much more
walking your feet have got to do.'
'I hope they've got more to do than they've ever done yet, old
hoss,' Rube said; 'at any rate, they've got a good thirty miles to
do to-night.'
'Are you in earnest, Rube?' said I.
'Never more so,' said he. 'All we've got to do is to get away, and
then tramp it.'
'How do you mean to get away, Rube?'
'Easy enough,' Rube said carelessly. 'Get our hands loose first,
then our legs, then kill them fellows and make tracks.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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