“I don’t know, but something’s bothering him—that’s sure—for he keeps pointing this way and wagging that great big head of his, like he’d shake it off. Seems to me as though he’s winning his point, too, because the other man isn’t objecting as much as he did before.”
“There, he shrugs his shoulders and turns away, just like he told him to do as he wanted and that as for him, he washed his hands of the whole business. Oh! what if they do start in to use those cruel quirts on our backs, Ned?”
Ned Nestor turned a little white himself at the very thought; but he clenched his teeth in that determined way of his and said, slowly:
“That would be pretty tough, boys, and I hope it doesn’t strike us; but if it should, remember that we’re scouts, and supposed to be able to stand pain, like the Indians were taught, without wincing or crying out.”
All of them were watching Hy Adams with uneasy eyes. They seemed to know from the triumphant glare with which the terror of the hills observed them that he must have carried his point with the leader, and was now only figuring on how he had better proceed.
“Oh! if only I had my Marlin here right now, mebbe I wouldn’t put him on the blink in a hurry, though?” Jimmy was sighing; “I’d hold up the camp and let you fellers find your own guns. Then we’d pick out the ones we wanted to keep, and tell the others to clear out. But that’s all a dream, because here I am with only me two fists to back me up, and they wouldn’t count against that hog!”
Hy Adams was now talking with several of the most dissipated looking of the men. Whatever he might be telling them it seemed to please the others immensely, for they laughed harshly; and one fellow immediately stepped over to take down his quirt from where it hung alongside the door of a shack.
“There, did you see that?” demanded Harry, “it means whips after all, Ned! Oh! to think of their cruel hearts. Just like we lived down in Delaware, where they have the whipping post going. Can we do anything to get them to let up on the game?”
“I’m sorry to say not,” responded Ned. “Seems as if they’d got to the point where they must see the blood flow to satisfy their desire for revenge. We spoiled their little scheme for getting your uncle’s best herd of prize cattle that he means for exhibition purposes and this Adams has it in for us on that account.”
“Did you ever see such a terrible brute in your born days?” Harry asked, with a shiver of dread, for there were three punchers now who had laid hold of quirts and amused themselves, cracking the lashes at the ends of the whips as though desirous of inspiring additional fear in the hearts of the prisoners by making such suggestive sounds.