"
"Can you see what he's doing now?" asked Teddy.
"Why, I saw him knocking at the door of the tent, and I presume that
by this time he is sitting in my chair picking his teeth, after
devouring the bread! That sure is some highwayman, that mule, yet I
feel that I'm going to love and admonish him!"
The boys dashed down the slope to the tent and found Uncle Ike, as
Jimmie insisted on calling a tall, ungainly, raw-boned mule, chewing
at a slice of ham which he had pilfered from a box by the side of the
fire.
"There's one thing about Uncle Ike," Jimmie grinned, as Ned drove the
animal away with a club. "He always looks like he had been sent for
to lead an experience meeting! He'll put on a face as long as a cable
to a freight train, and then he'll turn to me and wink one eye, as if
explaining that it was all for a joke."
"That's your ham he's chewing, Jimmie!" Ned declared.
"I suppose so," the boy replied. "That's what you get by being
brother to a long-eared mule that for cussedness has Becker's gunmen
backed up a creek with the oars lost!"
While the mule was being restored to his companions, Jimmie and Teddy
began getting supper. They had plenty of tinned goods, plenty of
flour, potatoes, meal and ham and bacon.
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