“Well, you’ve heard as much of his talk as any of us, Jack,” replied the leader of the expedition, quietly, “and so far there’s been nothing said about himself. I’m going to beckon to Amos to come over here, and put a few leading questions to him. Out here when a fellow is entertained at the camp fire, it’s only fair that he give some sort of an account of himself. Besides, Amos looks so much like a kid, just as you say, that it makes the thing seem queer.”
A minute later, catching the eye of the boy, he crooked his finger and nodded his head. Plainly Amos understood, for he immediately came across.
“Sit down, Amos,” Ned told him.
The small boy in the cowboy suit did so, at the same time allowing a sort of smile to come upon his bronzed face.
“Want to know somethin’ about me, I reckon?” he remarked, keenly.
Jack chuckled as though amused at his shrewdness; but Ned only said:
“Well, ordinarily out here on the plains I understand that men seldom express any curiosity about their chance guests; it isn’t always a safe thing to do. But you see, Amos, in your case it’s different.”
“Sure it is; I get on to that, Mr. Scout Master,” replied the boy, readily; for he had ere this noticed the emblem which Ned bore upon his khaki coat, and which stamped him as authorized to answer to this name, which would indicate that Amos knew something about the Boy Scout business.
“In the first place we chanced to be of some little assistance to you.”
“A heap!” broke in the other, quickly.
“And then, excuse me for saying it, but you are such a kid that anybody would be surprised to run across you out by yourself, carrying a gun, riding a pony like the smartest puncher going, and after big game at the time you got stuck in that quicksand – all of which, Amos, must be our excuse for feeling that we’d like to hear something about you.”
“That’s only fair and square, Ned,” the boy spoke up immediately; “Jimmy there has been telling me the greatest lot of stuff about what you fellows have been doing all over, that I’d think he was stuffing me, only he held up his hand right in the start, and declared he never told anything but the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help him. And I’m ready to tell you who I am, and what I’m adoin’ out here.”
“Not that we think you’re anything that you shouldn’t be, Amos,” put in Jack.
“Well, my name’s Amos Adams, just like I said, and all my life I’ve been around a cattle ranch. That’s why I know so much about roping steers, and riding buckin’ broncs. I guess I was in a saddle before my ma weaned me. There are a few things mebbe I can’t quite do as well as some of these here prize punchers, but it’s only because I ain’t as strong as them, that’s all.”
Looking at his confident face the scouts believed that Amos was only speaking the plain truth.
“My dad’s name is Hy Adams,” continued the kid puncher. “I guess you ain’t been around these diggin’s much yet, or you’d a heard who he is. They call him the Bad Man of the Bittersweets, and when he raises his fog-horn of a voice lots of men that think themselves brave just give a hitch to their shoulders this way,” and he imitated it to the life as he spoke, “and does what he tells ’em. That’s when he’s been drinkin’. But then there are other times – oh, well, I reckon, I hadn’t ought to tell family secrets.
“We live in a cabin, ’bout ten miles away from here. My dad, he’s in the cattle business, when he don’t loaf. Sometimes he’s ’round home, and agin he ain’t, just ’cordin’ to how things are agoin’. Mam, she’s a little woman, but she knows how to run the house. I gotter sister, too, younger’n me, and her name it’s Polly. I ain’t gone to school any to speak of, but mam, she kinder teaches me, when I ain’t ridin’ out on the range, or totin’ my gun on a hunt. That makes me mad to think I lost my gun in the drink there.”
“No use hunting for it in the morning, I should think?” suggested Jack.
“Nary bit,” the boy replied quickly; “it’s down under that shiftin’ sand long before now. But then she was an old gun, and I’m savin’ up to git a new six-shot rifle, so it don’t need to be long now before I’ll be heeled agin.”
“Is your father a rancher, then, Amos?” Jack went on to ask, idly.
The boy grinned and looked at him queerly.
“Well,” he replied, with a quaint drawl that amused the scouts, “I don’t know as you could call him that way, exactly. He’s been cow puncher, and nigh everything else a man c’n be down thisaway to make a livin’. Me and my awful dad we don’t git on well. That’s one reason I gen’rally skips out when he takes a notion to lay ’round home for a spell. He knows right well I ain’t afeard of him, if he has got the name of bein’ a holy terror. I happen to belong to the same fambly. ’Sides, he ain’t what you’d call my real and true dad.”
“Oh! I see, you adopted him, did you, Amos?” Jack asked, laughingly.
“My mam she married agin after pop he was planted, and they went an’ changed my name from Scroggins to Adams. I don’t know which I likes best; but Scroggins that’s honest, anyway, which Adams ain’t – leastways some people around this region say it ain’t. When I grows up I reckon I’ll be a Scroggins, or else get a new name.”
Again the scouts exchanged amused glances. Amos was certainly a most entertaining little chap, with his quaint sayings.
“Now, you see, dad never comes home alone any more, but fetches some of his cronies along with him, and there’s unpleasant scenes ahappenin’ all the time; which is one of the reasons why I skip out. They gets to drinkin’, too, purty hard, till mam she has to douse a bucket of water over each puncher, and start ’em off. Mam she don’t approve of the kinds of business that dad takes up. But he keeps amakin’ these here visits to home further apart all the while, ’cause things ain’t as pleasant as they might be. Some time mebbe he won’t come no more. I’m bankin’ on that, which is one reason I ain’t never laid a hand on him when he gets roarin’ like a mad bull. There are others, too, but I wont mention the same.”
Amos had apparently been very frank with his new friends. He seemed to have taken a great fancy for them all, and, in turn, asked many questions concerning their expected visit to Harry’s uncle on Double Cross Ranch, which place he knew very well.
The conversation by degrees became general, and finally the scouts went on to talk about their own affairs. During this exchange of opinions, it happened that the name of Clem Parsons was mentioned by Ned. Perhaps it would be hardly fair to call it “chance,” when in reality the scout master wanted to find out whether the kid puncher seemed to be familiar with the name of the man whom the Government authorities in Washington wished him to round up.
The bait took, for immediately he heard Amos say:
“What’s that, Clem Parsons? Say, I happen to know a man by that name, and he’s been over to our house lots of times, too.”
“Then he’s a puncher, is he?” asked Ned.
“Well, I reckon he has been ’bout everything in his day, for I’ve heard him say so,” came the reply. “He rides with my awful dad, an’ they seem to git on together, which is some queer, because most of ’em is that skeered o’ dad they tries to steer clear o’ him.”
“My! but this dad of yours must be a grizzly bear, Amos?” remarked Jimmy, who had been greatly impressed with what he heard the boy say.
“Just you wait till you see him, that’s all,” was what Amos told him. “Mam, she reckons as how ’twas this same Clem Parsons as had got dad to ridin’ ’round the kentry doin’ things that might git him into trouble, an’ she hates him like pizen, for the same. Since they got to goin’ together, dad he’s allers showing plenty