He stumbled, felt a pair of gripping arms about him, holding him tight so that he could not struggle. A hoarse voice called, “Here he is, Reno! Got the bloody little rat!”
“Good!” came the response. “Bring ’im here to the light. If he’s a spy, I’ll pull out his little throat, blast ’im!”
Helpless and too weary to fight any more, Blackie felt himself being picked up roughly and carried toward the hut on Black Pond that was the hiding-place of the two murderous vagabonds who had done to death the harmless old hermit of the Lenape hills.
CHAPTER XIII
ROBBERY BY NIGHT
“Bring ’im over here to the fire, Lew,” directed Reno, “and we’ll just have a look at his ugly mug.”
The younger tramp carried Blackie to the hearth and threw him down on his back, still gripping him about the body with both hands. Reno, the man with the patch over his eye, stood up against the fireplace the bar he had been using as a weapon. Blackie recognized that bar at once. It was the object the hermit had shown them when the campers visited him—his prized “thunderbolt” that had been the direct cause of his death. Dazed, he watched Reno stir up the fire and draw forth a blazing brand which he held up for a torch, close to the boy’s features.
“Glory be, it’s just a young kid!” snorted Lew. “From the way he was fightin’ me, I thought it was a wildcat at least! What’s he doin’ here?”
Reno spat, wiped his mouth, and swore terribly with his face close to Blackie’s. “You, now! Who sent you here?”
“N-N-Nobody,” the boy managed to stammer.
“No tricks, now!” warned the loathsome tramp. “If you’re alone, what are you doin’ here?”