“Not so many; none that I know of but you and me. I wonder what he has done to you?”
The other waived this question and replied: “I have found two parties that hate him; two that came in last week.”
“Have you? then, if you are in earnest, make me acquainted with them, for I am weak-handed; I lost one of my pals yesterday.”
“Indeed! how?”
“They caught him at work and gave him a rap over the head with a spade. The more —— fool he for being caught. Here is to his memory.”
“Ugh! what, is he, is he—”
“Dead as a herring.”
“Where shall we all go to? What lawless fellows these diggers are. I will bring you the men.”
For the last two months the serpentine man had wound in and out the camp, poking about for a villain of the darker sort as minutely as Diogenes did for an honest man, and dispensing liquor and watching looks and words. He found rogues galore, and envious spirits that wished the friends ill, but none of them seemed game to risk their lives against two men, one of whom said openly he would kill any stranger he caught in his tent, and whom some fifty stout fellows called Captain Robinson, and were ready to take up his quarrel like fire. But at last he fell in with two old lags, who had a deadly grudge against the captain, and a sovereign contempt for him into the bargain. By the aid of liquor he wormed out their story. This was the marrow of it: The captain had been their pal, and, while they were all three cracking a crib, had with unexampled treachery betrayed them, and got them laid by the heels for nearly a year; in fact, if they had not broken prison they would not have been here now. In short, in less than half an hour he returned with our old acquaintances, brutus and mephistopheles.
These two came half reluctant, suspicious and reserved. But at sight of Black Will they were reassured, villain was so stamped on him. With instantaneous sympathy and an instinct of confidence the three compared notes, and showed how each had been aggrieved by the common enemy. Next they held a council of war, the grand object of which was to hit upon some plan of robbing the friends of their new swag.