“The walking is good enough for young legs like yours, sonny, so I reckon you’d better light down and lend us this hoss for a bit. My pard here is lame, so that he can’t keep up with the procession very well, and we’re in a hurry to get along.”
“But I am in a hurry too,” answered Arthur, trying to speak bravely and to control the fear that had driven every bit of color from his cheeks. “And I am going to the village on very important business.”
“It must be _very_ important,” said the tramp with a disagreeable laugh.
“Yes,” spoke up the other, “I reckon it’s as important as buying a stick of candy; but that’s nothing to the importance of our business. We’re walking delegates of the society of independent tramps, we are, and our business can’t wait. So tumble down out of that saddle, young feller, without wasting any more of our walyable time. If yer don’t I’ll pull yer down; for we’ve got to have this ere hoss.”
The word “tramp” was as an inspiration to Arthur, and he answered boldly: “If you steal my horse I shall tell my friend, Sandy Grimes, the very next time I see him, and he will make you send it back, besides making you very sorry that you dared do such a thing.”
“What do you know about Sandy Grimes?” asked the man who had the bridle, while they both looked so uneasily at each other that it was evident the name was one they knew and feared.
“He is a friend of mine,” replied Arthur, “and he told me I was to mention his name if any tramps like you ever tried to bother me.”
“How are you going to prove you are a friend of Sandy’s?” asked one of the men. “You don’t look over much like one of his kind.”
“I’ll prove it this way,” answered the quick-witted boy. As he spoke, he drew a bit of pencil, and the despatch he was to deliver, from his pocket. On the back of the latter he made the symbol M̥, that the big tramp, with whose boy he had fought months before, had shown him.
The two tramps look at it in amazement. “Yes, that’s Sandy’s mark,” said one of them at length; “there’s no going back on that. But I don’t see how he ever come to give it to the likes of you. However, seeing that you’ve got it, and claims Sandy for a friend, I suppose we’ve got to let you and the hoss go. You’ll have to give us every cent of money that’s about your clothes, though, for my pard ’ll have to pay his railroad fare, if he can’t have a hoss to ride.”