"Oh!" growled the man, and turned on his heel. The information seemed to relieve his mind, for when he had taken a few loitering steps about the enclosure, and confronted Lafe again, his tone was less quarrelsome. "Left the hospital camp up there, eh?" he asked, with a sidelong nod of his head toward the top of the hill.
"Well, yes—and no," responded the boy. "It was there when I left it, but it ain't there now. Or rather, it is there, but we ain't there."
"What are you driving at?" the man demanded, once more in a rougher voice.
"The rebs have gobbled it," said Lafe. "Our folks were skedaddling and the rebs were coming in the last I saw."
The man gave a low whistle of surprise and interest. He began walking about again, bending his ugly brows in thought meanwhile. From time to time he paused to ask other questions, as to which way the people of the brigade camp had fled, how large was the force which had captured the camp, and the like.
The news evidently impressed him a good deal. Lafe got the idea that somehow it changed his plans. What were these plans? the boy wondered. The whole thing was very hard to make out. More than once he had had it in mind to say that he had left another member of the band, a very nice fellow indeed, up on the side-hill above them, who must also be hungry, and to suggest that he should call him down.
But every time, when this rose to his tongue, a glance at the evil face of the man restrained him. He could not but remember what Foldeen had hinted, that there was some "deviltry" going on down below here. What was it?
"There must have been some pretty tough fighting right here," he ventured to remark, after a while.
"You bet there was!" the other assented. He seemed not averse to a little talk, though his mind was still on other things.
"I don't quite figure it out," the boy went on, cautiously. "Of course, wrastling round in the woods like this, you can't make head nor tail of how things go, or who's on top, or where—but how does it stand—right here, I mean? We're in our own lines here, ain't we?"