ght had restricted Jim to an
old double-barreled fowling-piece, which he usually carried slung across
his shoulders; an old-fashioned "six-shooter," whose barrels revolved
occasionally and unexpectedly, known as "Allen's Pepper Box" on account
of its culinary resemblance; and a bowie-knife. Clarence carried an
Indian bow and arrow with which he had been exercising, and a hatchet
which he had concealed under the flanks of his saddle. To this Jim
generously added the six-shooter, taking the hatchet in exchange--a
transfer that at first delighted Clarence, until, seeing the warlike
and picturesque effect of the hatchet in Jim's belt, he regretted the
transfer. The gun, Jim meantime explained "extry charged," "chuck up"
to the middle with slugs and revolver bullets, could only be fired by
himself, and even then he darkly added, not without danger. This poverty
of equipment was, however, compensated by opposite statements from
Jim of the extraordinary results obtained by these simple weapons from
"fellers I knew:" how HE himself had once brought down a "bull" by a
bold shot with a revolver through its open bellowing mouth that pierced
his "innards;" how a friend of his--an intimate in fact--now in jail at
Louisville for killing a sheriff's deputy, had once found himself alone
and dismounted with a simple clasp-knife and a lariat among a herd of
buffaloes; how, leaping calmly upon the shaggy shoulders of the biggest
bull, he lashed himself with the lariat firmly to its horns, goading it
onward with his clasp-knife, and subsisting for days upon the flesh cut
from its living body, until, abandoned by its fellows and exhausted
by the loss of blood, it finally succumbed to its victor at the very
outskirts of the camp to which he had artfully driven it! It must be
confessed that this recital somewhat took away Clarence's breath, and
he would have liked to ask a few questions. But they were alone on the
prairie, and linked by a common transgression; the glorious sun was
coming up victoriously, the pure, crisp air was intoxicating their
nerves; in the bright forecast of youth everything WAS possible!

The surface of the bottom land that they were crossing was here and
there broken up by fissures and "potholes," and some circumspection in
their progress became necessary. In one of these halts, Clarence was
struck by a dull, monotonous jarring that sounded like the heavy regular
fall of water over a dam. Each time that they slackened t