“Stop for a moment, lads,” said I, “and listen to me before I leave you. Most of you have been good to me and took me in when I didn’t know where to turn, but I’m not going to jail with my eyes wide open, and I hate to see you do it. As for me, I’m going to cut to that nearest field to the right of us, and get to grass. The field we’re in leads to the woods; so does that pasture lot.”
At this emphatic stand, a halt was called by Tall Jim, with the result that all but Utley came to my way of thinking, and followed my lead to the pasture; and he too, after much swearing, seeing he was in the minority, trailed along. But the mischief had been done, as I have remarked. After reaching the grass, where our course could not be traced to a certainty, we made for the woods, which, to my regret, proved to be a shallow ravine, with trees, none too thickly placed for our purpose, on either side. I announced that this was no spot for us to dally in a minute; but Jack Utley went up in opposition again, and producing a weapon in the shape of a luscious-looking apple pie, as an argument with which to beat the others into his way of thinking, sat down at the bottom of the ravine, close by a brook, and began to devour a part of it. This was too much for the others, even Tall Jim, and they sat down and joined in the pie-eating.
“In the name of common sense, lads, are you all crazy?” I exclaimed angrily. “Will you invite trouble? Mark my words, the constables will be on our track in less than an hour. Will you plan for days, win, and then throw all overboard for the lack of a little reason?”
They would not heed me, even in earnest as I was, but, with appetites more than keen, continued to greedily munch pie. I would have done the same thing had I not fully realized the danger, being hungry enough; but I ventured one more plea: “Let’s get out of this trap, boys, and find a thick woods, no matter how far we have to go. This place will be the first to be searched, seeing that we have made a beaten path almost to it. If we are discovered, where, I put it up to you, will we find cover? There’s nothing but open country on both sides of us now.”
With his big, cavernous mouth—though all together he was a good-looking chap, priding himself much on being a ladies’ man—filled to overflowing with pie, Utley managed to say: “Blather all you want to, greeny; we’re going to stay right here till night comes. We’re not fools enough to steer out into the open country by daylight, and you might as well smoke up.”
If it would have availed me anything, I might have still argued; but as everything indicated to the contrary, I stopped here, though I felt that a real outpouring of hot anger upon the whole lot of them would have lifted a great pressure from my mind. Up to the moment of getting the money the lads had used excellent judgment, but since then all but Tall Jim had seemed to lack even the brains of an idiot. And as for Jim, I saw that a big appetite had suddenly clouded his intellect.
“Stay here if you like,” I said, as calmly as I was able; “stay here and lose all you’ve gained, but do it at your own risk, and don’t think, when it is too late, that you’ve not been warned. As for me, I’m going to strike for safety.”
Thus firing my last warning gun, I left them at their pie-eating, and began a search for a hiding-place suited to my own ideas. After much diligent scouring over several acres of land, about an eighth of a mile farther down the ravine, and a little from it, I found a shelving ledge below which was a sort of cave, where I believed a dozen men could stow themselves away by a little squeezing. Though not much of a cave to my mind, it seemed to be a place that might not be discovered, though a right good search of the neighborhood was made. Its mouth was pretty well hidden in all directions by a scrubby growth of bushes, though any one in hiding in it could without much trouble see the ravine and hear any one approaching from that quarter. So, returning, I, with renewed arguments and armed with the possibilities of my discovery, induced the lads, including the pig-headed Utley, to occupy the new refuge, they in the meantime having taken my advice not to leave the slightest trace of our course from the ravine. Having accomplished this, I experienced a grim satisfaction I could not conceal from Utley. I felt confident that I had warded off, in a measure, the danger which he had brought upon us by his headstrong plunging down the railroad bank and in the ploughed field.
I had been deceived as to the space in the cave, for I must tell it, that I may be truthful on all points, that when all hands were inside, and well out of the casual view of any one of the expected searching party, there was scarcely an inch left in which to move or change one’s position. But it was, at all events, a real hiding-place.
It may appear rather of the dime-novel order, but in chronicling this most thrilling experience of my life I must tell that we had not been in our retreat more than an hour when we were set a-tremble by hearing voices in the ravine. When they were near enough to be distinguished, we heard sufficient to make us know who the disturbers were and what they were after. Our feelings can be imagined as we, remaining almost breathless, listened to the shouts and heard the searchers beating into every nook and corner of the ravine. And as the moments passed we could hear them getting nearer and nearer. Presently the pursuers were not more than a dozen feet away.