"Buck, you'll be sorry you did this," Fred broke his silence to make one last appeal, though he was determined not to demean himself, and "crawl" as Buck himself would call it.
"Hey! what's this? Are you really threatenin' me?" demanded the other, hotly.
"I didn't mean it that way," Fred answered. "What I wanted to say, was that you'd be sorry later on you didn't try to pull me out. You see I haven't hardly any clothes on; and it's cold and damp down here. Chances are, that if I stay here through the whole night I'll get my death of cold."
"Well, what's that to me?" said the other, gruffly; though Fred thought he saw him hesitate a little, as if appalled at the prospect. "I didn't throw you down there, did I? Can't shove any of that blame on me, eh? If I hadn't just happened to stroll this way, I'd never even knowed you was in such a fix."
"But you do know it," said Fred, "and everybody will say it was up to you to help me out, after you found me here. That makes you responsible, Buck, in the eye of the law. I've heard Judge Colon say as much. A knowledge of the fact makes you a party to it, he told a man he was talking to. I'm going to ask you once more to take hold of this vine when I hold it up, and let me pull myself out."
He did raise the rope substitute, but Buck declined to accept his end of it.
"I don't see why I ought to give you a hand, Fenton," he remarked, coldly. "I've stood a lot from you, and as I said before, since you came to town things have all gone wrong with me, so I never do have a good time any more. I blame you for it. Yes, and right now it's you more'n any other feller that's got me kicked out of my own home."
"Now I don't understand what you mean there, Buck?" remonstrated Fred, still holding the end of the vine upward invitingly, though with small hope that the other would take hold.
"All right, I'll just tell you, then," Buck replied, almost savagely. "Who led the party that found Colon? You did. Who found a track of a shoe, with a patch across the sole, on the spot where Colon said he was nabbed by a bunch of fellers with red cloth over part of their faces? Why, Freddy again, to be sure. And hang it all, my shoe did have just such a patch! That's what they told my dad; and brought it all home to me."
Fred was silent again. He saw that things were working against him once more. If Buck felt this way about it, all his endeavors to induce the other to lend his aid were bound to be useless.