But Bill didn't try to move any; he only said: “Can't an honest working-man take a little nap? You go 'way and leave me be!”
“William Patterson,” says Squint, “you are kidnapped!”
“Yer a liar,” says Bill. “I ain't. Ye can't prove it on to me. I'm just takin' a little nap.”
Then he rouses up a little more and looks at us puzzled, and begins to mumble and talk to himself:
“Here I be,” he says, “and here they be! I can see 'em, all right; but they can't fool me! They ain't really nothing here. I seen too many of them tremenses come and go to be fooled that easy.”
“Arise, William Patterson, and come with us,” says Squint.
“Now, you don't want to get too sassy,” says Bill, “or you'll turn into something else the first thing you know. You tremenses always does turn into something else.” We had to kick him on the shins to make him get up. When we did that he says to himself: “Shucks, now! A body'd think he was bein' kicked if he didn't know different, wouldn't he?”
He came along peaceable enough, but muttering to himself all the way: “Monkeys and crocodiles and these here striped jackasses with wings on to 'em I've saw many a time, and argified with 'em, too; and talked with elephants no bigger'n a man's fist; and oncet I chased a freight train round and round that calaboose and had it give me sass; but this is the first time a passel o' little old men ever come and trotted me down the pike.”
And he kept talking like that all the way to the cave. It was midnight before we took off his handcuffs and shoved him in. When we gave him that shove, he did get sort of spiteful and he says:
“You tremenses think you're mighty smart, but if I was to come out of this sudden, where would you be? Blowed up, that's where—like bubbles!”