m, and all that time their friends wouldn't ever know what
become of that caravan. Tom said:

"NOW we know what it was that happened to the people we got the swords
and pistols from."

Yes, sir, that was just it. It was as plain as day now. They got buried
in a sand-storm, and the wild animals couldn't get at them, and the wind
never uncovered them again until they was dried to leather and warn't
fit to eat. It seemed to me we had felt as sorry for them poor people as
a person could for anybody, and as mournful, too, but we was mistaken;
this last caravan's death went harder with us, a good deal harder.
You see, the others was total strangers, and we never got to feeling
acquainted with them at all, except, maybe, a little with the man that
was watching the girl, but it was different with this last caravan. We
was huvvering around them a whole night and 'most a whole day, and had
got to feeling real friendly with them, and acquainted. I have found
out that there ain't no surer way to find out whether you like people or
hate them than to travel with them. Just so with these. We kind of liked
them from the start, and traveling with them put on the finisher. The
longer we traveled with them, and the more we got used to their ways,
the better and better we liked them, and the gladder and gladder we was
that we run across them. We had come to know some of them so well that
we called them by name when we was talking about them, and soon got so
familiar and sociable that we even dropped the Miss and Mister and just
used their plain names without any handle, and it did not seem unpolite,
but just the right thing. Of course, it wasn't their own names, but
names we give them. There was Mr. Elexander Robinson and Miss Adaline
Robinson, and Colonel Jacob McDougal and Miss Harryet McDougal, and
Judge Jeremiah Butler and young Bushrod Butler, and these was big chiefs
mostly that wore splendid great turbans and simmeters, and dressed like
the Grand Mogul, and their families. But as soon as we come to know them
good, and like them very much, it warn't Mister, nor Judge, nor nothing,
any more, but only Elleck, and Addy, and Jake, and Hattie, and Jerry,
and Buck, and so on.

And you know the more you join in with people in their joys and their
sorrows, the more nearer and dearer they come to be to you. Now we
warn't cold and indifferent, the way most travelers is, we was right
down friendly and sociable, and took a chance in everything