“I was told always to follow them,” said Rivera. “I have been at their heels for weeks. But they would do nothing until to-night.” Rivera's manner when he related the long-drawn indolence of his quarry and those weeks wherein they would “do nothing,” tasted of disappointment. “However,”—this as though a wrong had been repaired,—“they got to work at last, so after all it ends right.”
Now I walked across to my moaning one of the broken arm, who still sat nursing his injuries.
“Why would you rob us?” I asked.
“Rob you?” he repeated between moans, and with a startled air. “No one wanted to rob you.”
“You and your gang,” said I—for this was the story I meant to tell, if made to tell one of the night's turmoil—“you and your gang are footpads. You would have robbed us. Should you be in the town to-morrow, I will find you a place of bars and bolts.”
Certainly, these brawling creatures were not highwaymen, but only ruffians whom that Catron had hired for I know not what particular purpose of revenge. But the wretch's exclamation, “Here is our big lover and his light o' love!” alarmed me for Peg. I would not have that tale told to thus bring forth her name. It were better to drive these fellows off and have an end of it. That was my thought in calling them footpads and talking of attempts to take a purse.
The argument of robbery put a measure of life into the moaning one; he got upon his feet and made ready to betake himself to scenes of better safety.
“My arm is broken,” said he, whiningly, and as hoping I might feel a sympathy.
“It should have been your neck, instead,” said I, in no wise sympathetic. “And so it would, had I owned the forethought to have had you by the throat rather than your arm. You might better depart, sirrah; else I may yet wring round your head, for my spirit is hard laid siege to by some such twisting impulse.”
That was enough; our moaning one made shift to get himself away through the trees and with not a trifle of expedition.