“Yes,” said Dave, solemnly; “we seen him do it! Both of us!”
“What?” asked Dan. “What was it he did?”
“Keep yer eye on him,” said Tom. “He’s a cold-blooded murderer an’ a robber, an’ worse! He killed his mate with a knife, that’s what he done!”
Petit’s face was a study in hate and rage.
“Keep cool, Sour Krout,” observed Tom, grimly. “You’ve had your innings. Yesterday we was your prisoners. You ’ad the upper hand, you did, and you treated me an’ Dave bad. That was your picnic, and me and Dave was invited. Now this is our picnic, an’ we’ve invited you!”
Dave proceeded to do a nervous war dance round the captive.
“Yah!” he cried. “Twice yesterday an’ once this mornin’ you offered to cut our throats didn’t yer?”
“After we see this cove murder his mate,” explained Tom and Dan, “we was frightened to go an’ tell. We thought he’d lay for us an’ kill us, too. So we came down the river in our boat an’ landed here; but he’d got here before we did some how or another, an’ he ketched us and took the boat from us, an’ drawed it up in the scrub so’s we couldn’t get away. He said he’d cut our throats with his knife if we didn’t do what he told us to, and we was frightened. We never let on to him we knowed what he done. We was goin’ to swim for it when we see you come in the boat. He was just goin’ to collar that boat an’ get away when he remembered about the money he stole, an’ went back for it. It’s a lucky thing he did. Me an’ Dave might a been dead now only he forgot that money.”
“The money!” exclaimed George. “Where is it now?”
“I dunno,” said Tom; “unless he dropped it by the tree when I fired at him first.”