"To burning fire with you!" bellowed the filial son. "Take your arms away!"
"Let us make up, Joe! Everybody has run away from us. Huldy is gone, too. McLane is dead."
"Dead? Dead where?"
"There"—she pointed to a feather-bed lying upon the floor, the outlines of which seemed unusually pointed and stiff for feathers, though it was sown up in its own blankets and quilts. Joe Johnson touched it with his foot and bounded back.
"Hell-cat!" he cried, "is this one of your tricks?"
"I did it fur you, Josie. He brought it on hisself. There's his portmanteau full of money to pay our travelling expenses. He's sewed up beautiful, and in the bay you can drop him to the bottom."
Joe Johnson's face became almost livid pale, and, rushing upon Patty Cannon with both hands raised, he struck her to the floor and put his boot upon her.
"If I had time, I'd have your life," he hissed. "But it would lose the uptucker a job. To-night I leave you forever. Margaretta, your daughter, wishes never to see you again. Take this crib and the blood you still must shed to keep your old heart warm, and take my curse to choke you on the gallows!"
He rushed away and gave a low whistle at the window; Daw and Joe's brother, Ebenezer, a lower set and more sinister being, bounded up the stairs and loosened and drove before them the little band of captives.
"One word from you, white nigger, in all this journey to-day, scatters your brains in the woods!"