'Marion Rangers! good name, b'gosh!' said
he. And wanted to know why we hadn't had a picket-guard at the place
where the road entered the prairie, and why we hadn't sent out a scouting
party to spy out the enemy and bring us an account of his strength, and
so on, before jumping up and stampeding out of a strong position upon a
mere vague rumour--and so on, and so forth, till he made us all fell
shabbier than the dogs had done, and not half so enthusiastically
welcome. So we went to bed shamed and low-spirited; except Stevens.
Soon Stevens began to devise a garment for Bowers which could be made to
automatically display his battle-scars to the grateful, or conceal them
from the envious, according to his occasions; but Bowers was in no humour
for this, so there was a fight, and when it was over Stevens had some
battle-scars of his own to think about.
Then we got a little sleep. But after all we had gone through, our
activities were not over for the night; for about two o'clock in the
morning we heard a shout of warning from down the lane, accompanied by a
chorus from all the dogs, and in a moment everybody was up and flying
around to find out what the alarm was about.
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