"I'm meaning to be his friend, and the friend, of his folks," Kracker continued.
"Funny way you have of showing your friendly feelings, then, I must say," declared Thad, with scorn in his voice; "making him a prisoner, trying to force him to give up a secret you choose to think he carries; and when he refuses to take you at your word, putting him there on that ledge, to starve, or face a horrible death in perhaps falling down a couple of hundred feet."
Kracker looked a little confused, but it was only a flash in the pan. Such a thing as shame was foreign to his nature. For years he had been used to browbeating almost every person with whom he had had dealings. The fact that first of all a mere slip of a woman had dared defy him, and then her boy did the same, nettled him beyond description; and he had arrived at desperate measures at the time Aleck, so unfortunately for the boy, fell into his hands.
And now it galled Kracker to see how he and his two helpers were being actually held up by a parcel of half grown lads. Why, it would seem as though some mockery of fate had taken hold of his fortunes, and was finding keen pleasure in adding to his humiliation.
He would have liked to rush upon these cool boyish customers, and to have trampled them under foot, as he had possibly done many men in times past, when he was less huge in his proportions, and could get around better. But somehow he did not dare attempt it.
Perhaps it was the display of weapons that awed him; and yet Colonel Kracker was accustomed to seeing such things, and knew how to take them at their true value. Then it may have been the manner of the spokesman of the little party that had so depressing an effect upon the bully. Why, what was the world coming to, when mere boys began to hold the whip hand, and shape things as they pleased?
He started to talk, but spluttered so much he could not make intelligible sounds. And his round moon face had taken on a deep red hue again, until it bordered on the purple. Thad, who had some knowledge of medicine, as we have seen on numerous occasions, really began to wonder whether the bulky man might not be getting perilously near the border line, and taking chances with a sudden attack of apoplexy, or else something else along those lines.
Once or twice Thad had seen something move back of the three men. He dared not take his eyes off them long enough to look carefully, and at first could not decide whether it was a prowling wolf, bold enough to come thus near the camp in broad daylight; or a human being.
He even suspected at one moment that possibly the invaders might have been in greater numbers than any of the scouts dreamed; and that some of them were even then creeping around, with the idea of turning the tables on the boys by a sudden coup.
But that idea went glimmering, when he contemplated the utter impossibility of any foe crawling across the bare and open stretch of rock extending between their camp, and the foot of the rise.