"That young man is awfully in love with the Scotch girl. They make a good pair. We must save them as well as this fiery spark of a Mexican. She's more my style. This would be no kind of a world if such as they were tormented, and a vile creature like Brown had a good time of it in the big cities."
Getting back to Rosario's tent, he relieved the Drudge for the last time, and, throwing himself down in the damp, slept or pondered, which none could say, till the peep of day.
[CHAPTER XXIII.]
A FOREST LETTER.
Leaving the amiable Captain Kidd for the time being, but promising not to be slow in returning to him, we hasten to Old Nick's Jump, where we left a character as important and far more agreeable.
After having carried out their project in favour of the white women and their captors, the hunters deemed it wise to remain sheltered in the cavern. It was not from any likelihood of the Crow Indians making reprisals; it was clear enough that they had not recognized them, and had not lately been trying to trace them. The reason of their "laying low," i.e., lying perdu, was more powerful; Jim Ridge had to wait for intelligence before he would strike out.
The only persons excepted from this embargo were Filditch and Cherokee Bill, thanks to which exception Lottery Paul received the drubbing that gave him "funny bones all over."
These two were outliers to the rest, beating the bushes beyond the Jump-off incessantly.