For a few moments their music grew fainter and fainter, and then began to increase in volume. Presently they reappeared, still followed by the horsemen, and ran straight to the foot of the grape-vine.
I began to tremble now, but Tom was as cool as a cucumber.
“Wal, I never did see sich fools of dogs in all my born days,” exclaimed Barney, as the hounds looked up at the window, and began barking furiously. “They’ve follered the back track.”
“That’s jest what they’ve done,” said Luke Redman, in great disgust. “If I had my gun in my hands, I would shoot the last blessed one on ’em. Any body with half sense could tell that them boys wouldn’t come back here an’ go up into them rooms arter they were onct safe out of ’em. Call ’em away, an’ put ’em on the trail ag’in.”
This was easier said than done. The hounds understood their business much better than Barney, and they positively refused to yield obedience to his commands.
They knew they had treed their game, and, if they were capable of thinking at all, were doubtless wondering why their master did not make an effort to secure it. Even Luke Redman’s voice had no effect upon them; and, becoming highly enraged at last, he threw himself from his horse, and falling upon them with his rawhide, sent them yelping right and left.
“Thar, dog-gone you!” he shouted, “cl’ar yourselves! I’ll never trust none on you ag’in. Barney,” he added, suddenly, a bright idea striking him, “s’pose you an’ Jake run up stairs an’ look into them rooms. ’Twont do no harm, although I know the boys hain’t thar.”
Barney and his brother disappeared in the house, and presently we heard them coming up the stairs. They went to the door of my prison first, and were plainly very much surprised when it refused to open for them. They turned the key several times, to make sure that they had unlocked it, and pushed with all their might, but with no better success than before. Then they tried the other door, but found it equally well secured.
They kept up a chorus of questions and ejaculations all the while, and Tom and I stood leaning on our guns, smiling complacently at one another, and wondering how the matter would end.
The two Dragoons must have become suspicious at last, for they sunk their voices to a whisper, and after holding a short consultation, Barney cried out, in an excited tone: “Pap! I say, pap! Dog-gone my buttons, here they be!”