“The old man will be dreadful glad I’ve got you,” said Dan, wondering how he was going to leave Leon so that he wouldn’t arouse the whole neighborhood by his yelling, “and perhaps he’ll think I had better do something else with you. I want to go home and get a shirt, too, for these nights are mighty damp.”
“Does the old man believe as you do?” asked Leon. He thought it would be policy to learn all he could concerning the belief of the squatter’s family, for he did not expect to remain a prisoner all his life. When he returned he would know how to go to work. The first thing he did would be to put all that family under arrest.
“Of course the old man believes as I do,” said Dan. “The South is going to send men enough in here to whip you. I tell you, Leon, you fellows are crazy.”
“What are you going to do with that?” asked Leon, referring to a piece of shirt which Dan was carefully folding.
“I am going to use it as a gag,” said Dan. “You must think that I am a pretty smart man to go away and leave you with your mouth wide open. Now, I guess this will do.”
“I assure you that I won’t halloo,” exclaimed Leon, who did not like to have any of Dan’s clothing in his mouth. “Try me and see.”
“No, I reckon I’d best be on the safe side. If you will let this go into your mouth, well and good; if not, it will have to go in anyway,” said Dan, picking up his revolver.
There was but one course open to Leon, and he submitted to have a wad of shirt tucked into his mouth that almost made him sick. It was tied hard and fast, too, so that he could not get rid of it. Dan next turned his attention to his feet, which he bound with another piece of shirt, and fastened them to a tree so that he could not get up. Then he looked at the way his hands were fastened and got up, shoving the revolver into his pocket.
“I won’t be gone but a little while,” said Dan, straightening up the thicket in which Leon lay. “I reckon I’ll bring the old man back here with me. You will be glad to see him, I know. My father might have been top-notch in this county if it hadn’t been for your old man. But no, they wouldn’t have him for Secretary of War, and now they see what they made by it.”
Dan took one more look at his prisoner to see that his bonds were all safe, and then went away. He was hardly out of sight before Leon began tugging and twisting at his fastenings in the hope of being able to get rid of some of them; but the harder he worked the more he exhausted himself. Dan had done his work well, and finally Leon gave it up as a bad job. Dan was gone fully an hour, and when he came back Leon noticed that he didn’t have a shirt on. He noticed, too, that he was in pretty bad humor.