“The blight of hell blind him for a cursed pig,” he exclaimed with sudden savageness.
“There’s not much chance of that before he can say what he knows, Karasch. I mean to leave the country.”
He started so violently that he checked his horse, and when he rode up again he looked at me searchingly.
“Are you trying me?” he asked, half fiercely half in doubt.
“No, that’s for the judge to do.”
He chewed this answer for a while in gloomy silence; then he uttered one of his quaint oaths into his black beard, and his face cleared.
“There was a time when I should have thought you ready to do even that and worse. I don’t now.”
That beat me. “Then if I can’t fool you I may as well say what I mean to do,” I said. “Petrov knows the point where we met last night; and I shall send back to the priest at Poabja enough money to pay for a search party being sent out under Petrov’s guidance to find the officer. I marked the spot where we left him and can describe it clearly enough.”
“And the men at the camp?”
“I shall send money for them to be cared for.”