“Them breeds,” said Art, jerking a thumb back over a shoulder to indicate the prisoners sleeping about the other fire.
“Them same,” said Long Jim. “Cause why, you asks me? Cause I got a paradise to take you all to, where you can spend the Winter lapped in comfort. An’ I don’t want to take no rascals like them half-breeds there. But——”
Art was on his feet, excitement struggling with disbelief.
“What? What you mean, Long Jim?”
“Jest what I says,” answered the other emphatically. “A paradise, I calls it. An’ a paradise it is. An’ the quicker we git there the better, so wake up your friends an’ let me talk to ’em. If we have to take them skunks, why, we’ll take ’em.”
CHAPTER XXIV.—A TALE OF PARADISE.
At the insistence of Long Jim, Art and Jack, who had been called to join the pair, speedily re-aroused their friends.
“I ain’t no hand for talkin’,” Long Jim declared in answer to Art’s requests for further information. “I got to tell this. But onct oughter be enough. No use my tellin’ you an’ then tellin’ the rest o’ them all over agin.”
Jack smiled discreetly. Long Jim claimed he was “no hand for talking,” yet his tongue wagged continually. However, his heart seemed in the right place, and certainly he spoke emphatically enough of a haven not too far away to which they could go for refuge. What was it he called it? “Paradise.” Jack was anxious to hear, and wasted no time on gentle methods in arousing the sleepers.
“Lookit here,” said Long Jim, as the circle gathered around him. “Art’s been tellin’ me the trouble you folks is in. Looks to me like you moughtn’t be able to make it out o’ this country.”