"Why, boss, how is you going to get across de bayou?" asked the darky, in surprise.
"If my horse had not thrown me, I could have ridden him across," replied Tom. "But he had to start off on his own hook, and I shall have to do the best I can on foot. For that money I must have."
"Dat's all right, sar. But I don't see how you are going to get across de bayou."
"Don't you? Well, you just go ahead and cook me some breakfast and then I'll show you. If you had lived in these woods as long as I have, you would know that it is an easy matter to cut a tree across some parts of the bayou."
Tom washed his hands and face in some muddy water he dipped up from the stream that ran a short distance from the camp, dried them on his handkerchief, and watched the negro as he went about his work. Now and then, when he thought Tom was not looking at him, he would roll up his eyes, taking in at one swift glance all the clothing he wore, from his hat down to his boots. Tom was well enough acquainted with the negro character to know that he had excited his suspicions in some way.
"If I keep on in this way, I shall excite the mistrust of everyone I chance to meet," thought Tom, who wondered what he could have said that had caused this sudden change in the darky's behavior. "I have shut him up like an oyster, and not another thing can I get out of him. I shall be with him over half an hour longer, and then he can do what he pleases with his suspicions."
"Dat's a mighty slick rascal, dat feller," muttered the darky, as he fished the bacon out of the frying-pan and placed it on to a clean chip. "Dere's your breakfast, sar. I'll eat mine out here by this stump."
"Give me a cup of coffee," said Tom. "It is all I want."
The steaming beverage was placed before him. Tom thought of the great world into which he was so soon to enter, and wondered if everybody in it was going to treat him as this obscure darky had done. Texas was a pretty good-sized empire, he had heard them say, and he believed it was made up mostly of men who had gone there to get clear of the law, and who had enough to think of to keep themselves out of trouble; consequently they wouldn't bother their heads about a boy who had been suspected of stealing five thousand dollars. When Tom had reached this point in his meditations, the darky, who had evidently swallowed his breakfast whole and rolled up in a piece of old gunny sack the supply he intended Tom should take with him, handed the bundle to him with one hand, and reached out for the axe with the other.
"Ise ready now if you is, sar."