SAFETY IN COURAGE. 
59 
we know’d that gun went off right in our ears ! 
I was out and takin’ aim, at what I s’posed, in 
course, was an Injun, before my eyes was squarly 
open.” 
“ Why didn’t you shoot ? ” asked Mrs. Maxwell 
“ Wal, dura my cats if I can tell ! I got all 
ready, then I thought you acted kinder queer for 
an Injun, and I’d jest take a look at you; but I 
was so riled up I couldn’t make out nothin’, and 
allowed I was a fool to think of white folks, for 
there aint none lives hereabouts, and I couldn’t 
have believed any could git so near us and we not 
have know’d it. So I aimed agin — but I know’d 
you see me — still you didn’t skulk nor run. Great 
Peter ! if you had it’d been a bad job for us all ! ” 
and he shook his head solemnly, while, to hide 
his emotion, he looked intently at the hole in the 
smouldering ashes of the camp-fire that he was 
making with the toe of his boot. 
“ That’s so ! ” added his companion, impres- 
sively, “for Jim never misses what he draws a 
bead on.” 
“ Injuns — blarst their shadders ! — allers run 
when a feller comes out on ’em the way Bose 
and me did on you,” the first speaker continued, 
“ but I couldn’t make you out — I didn’t see no 
men’s clothes, and it wasn’t till I aimed the third 
time that it come to me you might be a woman ! 
I hope you’ll pardon a feller, marm. You see, 
