“Did the Indians chase you?” asked Moses.
“No,” said Jimmy, “I don’t reckon they did. They had too much sense, probably, after they’d found how far in I’d gone. They hadn’t any idea of getting lost themselves. That cave was a hundred caves, all partitioned off and running in and out of each other. I expect I pretty near died in them. All I remember is creeping and crawling along on my hands and knees most of the time, half the time in the water and half the time out, and then I went sort of crazy and beat against the rocks and screamed until the whole cavern mocked and mocked me. The next thing I knew I was lying on blankets in a cave that was fitted up as a hiding-place, and I learned that my rescuers were part of Big Harp’s gang. When Big Harp and the rest came, they were so amused they couldn’t do enough for me. They said they had come down to meet you folks, and that I should lead the party.”
“How did you come to have the letter to write the warning on?” asked Moses, whose imagination had supplied the rest of the story, and run ahead of the narrator.
“Big Horn wasn’t a good reader,” said Jimmy, “and I had been given the letter, to make out what he couldn’t make out for himself. Big Horn thought it said something about the Governor sending some money by the brig that was to leave Marietta with the ‘fresh,’ and he thought it might be more worth while to make sure of the brig than to capture you fellows. But when he learned that the word that he thought was ‘money’ was ‘militia,’ he lost interest in the letter, and they decided not to wait very long for you folks. If you hadn’t come in a day or two, they would have gone back further into the caves until the brig was safely past.”
“I suppose,” said Lincoln, “that the ark we passed, where the men were scalped, was the place where you were captured.”
Jimmy looked absently at Lincoln. “I guess that’s about all,” he said to Marion. “Big Harp warned me, when we attacked you, that if I turned on any of the gang he and the rest of his crowd would avenge themselves on any of you they captured, if they got the best of the fight. That’s why I didn’t kill any of them when the fight began.”
“That’s why you pitched into me?” asked Moses, in a sympathetic voice.
“Yes,” said Jimmy. “I didn’t want to seem to be idling.” He fixed Marion with his steady, dogged eyes. “Now, may I have Big Harp’s head to take to the commandant at Natchez?”
Marion looked from one to another of the arksmen.
“Yes!” they shouted.