“I guess you’re right,” said Joshua.  “When I wanted to get a favor out of dad, I always used to wait till the old man had got his belly full.  That made him kinder good-natured.”

“I see you understand human nature, Mr. Bickford,” said Joe.

“I guess I do,” said Joshua complacently.  “Great Jehoshaphat, who’s that?”

Joe raised his head and saw riding toward them a man who might have sat for the photograph of a bandit without any alteration in his countenance or apparel.  He wore a red flannel shirt, pants of rough cloth, a Mexican sombrero, had a bowie-knife stuck in his girdle, and displayed a revolver rather ostentatiously.  His hair, which he wore long, was coarse and black, and he had a fierce mustache.

“Is he a robber?” asked Joshua uneasily.

“Even if he is,” said Joe, “we are two to one.  I dare say he’s all right, but keep your weapon ready.”

Though Joe was but a boy and Bickford a full-grown man, from the outset he had assumed the command of the party, and issued directions which his older companion followed implicitly.  The explanation is that Joe had a mind of his own, and decided promptly what was best to be done, while his long-limbed associate was duller witted and undecided.

Joe and Joshua maintained their sitting position till the stranger was within a rod or two, when he hailed them.

“How are ye, strangers?” he said.

“Pretty comfortable,” said Joshua, reassured by his words.  “How fare you?”

“You’re a Yank, ain’t you?” said the newcomer, disregarding Joshua’s question.

“I reckon so.  Where might you hail from?”

“I’m from Pike County, Missouri,” was the answer.  “You’ve heard of Pike, hain’t you?”

“I don’t know as I have,” said Mr. Bickford.

The stranger frowned.

“You must have been born in the woods not to have heard of Pike County,” he said.  “The smartest fighters come from Pike.  I kin whip my weight in wildcats, am a match for a dozen Indians to onst, and can tackle a lion without flinchin’.”

“Sho!” said Joshua, considerably impressed.

“Won’t you stop and rest with us?” said Joe politely.

“I reckon I will,” said the Pike man, getting off his beast.  “You don’t happen to have a bottle of whisky with you, strangers?”

“No,” said Joe.

The newcomer looked disappointed.

“I wish you had,” said he.  “I feel as dry as a tinder-box.  Where might you be travelin’?”

“We are bound for the mines on the Yuba River.”

“That’s a long way off.”

“Yes, it’s four or five days’ ride.”

“I’ve been there, and I don’t like it.  It’s too hard work for a gentleman.”

This was uttered in such a magnificent tone of disdain that Joe was rather amused at the fellow.  In his red shirt and coarse breeches, and brown, not overclean skin, he certainly didn’t look much like a gentleman in the conventional sense of that term.