Lockwood stared back, incapable of speaking. The riverman laughed a little and went out, returning with a lump of corn pone and a tin cup of coffee.
“Here, swaller this,” he said, “an’ you’ll feel better.”
Three more men came in, and stood staring at the prisoner with the stolid curiosity of animals. Lockwood’s wrists were loosened; the food put into his hands. He could not eat the corn bread, but he drank the bitter, black coffee, and it did stimulate him. His head cleared. He looked round at the ring of hard faces.
“What’s this for? What are you going to do with me?” he demanded weakly.
“Dunno,” said Bob. “We’re goin’ to take right good keer of you, so you won’t git away.”
Lockwood shut his eyes again, beginning to remember, to understand—slowly, painfully piecing out the situation. Hanna was in alliance with the river gang, just as he had half suspected. It was a winning alliance, too. Lockwood could not but feel that he had lost his game—for the present. He was not much afraid for his life. The pirates might have murdered him very easily, but they had spared him; they said they were going to “take good keer” of him. Hanna wanted him out of the way until the oil deal could be put through.
His coat was gone, his boots, his cambric shirt. There was not much left but his trousers and underwear. His pistol was gone, of course, and his pocketbook and his watch, even his handkerchief. But the money belt was there. They had not thought to search him to the skin. He felt the familiar rasp of the leather and the hardness of the ten-dollar gold coins inside, and it gave him hope; so much does money seem to be power.
He asked to be let up, but they refused; and really he was better where he was. He spent the rest of the day in the bunk, dozing fitfully into nightmares, sometimes feverishly awake, too sick to know how the hours passed.
Twice more they brought him food, fried catfish and corn pone and the same black coffee, strong as oak-ash lye. He drank, but he could not eat; and after a time he found the cabin in darkness again. Some one tied his hands up without any regard for his comfort.
A loud chorus of snoring went on from the pirates in their bunks. Thus unguarded, he might have tried to escape, but he was far too ill to think of any such thing. He slept himself instead, and was the better for it. He awoke next morning with the swimming sensation almost gone from his head, and even a slight appetite.