“Disguised!”
“Yas.”
“Why, sir, it never occurred to me that you were.”
“Jest what I thort. I’ve pulled the wool over more’n one feller’s eyes. An’ onkimmon ’cute chap, who b’ars the handle o’ Kirby Kidd, thinks I’m his truest friend, an’ has the utmost confidence both in my faithfulness an’ my skill as an Injun-fighter. Fur all that, I am disguised, whether I look like it or no.”
Jim McCabe was so astonished that he could not reply, and, observing this, the hunter continued:
“Maybe ye’d like to know what I am, since I ain’t what I seem? I’ll tell yer. Besides bein’ Nick Robbins, I am the companion, the confed’rate, the right bower o’ Simon Girty!”
He paused a moment to note the effect of these words upon his hearer, and then went on:
“I see ye’re kinder amazed to hear this, but I’ll prove it to yer in the fraction of a second. I find it handy to pertend friendship to’arst the whites, though in reality I’m leagued with the Injuns, an’ am workin’ fur ’em the hull time. This mornin’ I wur over thar in the ravine with Girty and the red-skins, when we see’d ye comin’ that way. Girty said how’t ye’s a friend o’ his’n, but I recognized ye as a man from the settlement whar I’ve been lodgin’ lately, an’ bein’ sorter afeard ye’d expose me to the whites ef ye sot yer peepers on me, I perlitely hid my carcass behind a big stun’. I heerd all ye said, an’ found out ye wur ’bout as big a rascal as myself. Ha! ha! ha! When ye went away I come out from the stun’, an’ told Simon I wur goin’ to foller ye, an’ have a chat with ye ’bout this little affair. He told me I’d better not, that ye mought take it into yer head to expose me to the whites, but I argued that I had ye too much in my power to admit o’ yer doin’ sech a thing. So I follered ye, and hyur I am. D’ye know what I’m hyur fur? I’ll tell ye. Ye calc’late on j’inin’ the whites as thar friend, an’ inducin’ ’em by some trick to remain an hour or so arter dark. Now, I knows they ain’t got a very high opinion o’ you, an’ it’s all but likely they’d ketch ye in yer own trap. On t’other hand, ef I should go to the island I’d stand a better chance o’ success. They all know me, an’ have faith in every thing I say, an’ even Mr. Moreland hisself labors under the belief ut he an’ I are fast friends.”
Jim McCabe fell to thinking at this, and the result of his thinking was a firm belief in all the hunter had said.
“I beg your pardon,” he said, grasping Robbins’ hand, “for the rude manner in which I spoke to you a moment since. I regret that I was so hasty, and assure you I should not have acted so, had I even suspected that you had followed me for my own good.”