“No odds to me whether you do or not,” replied Jake. “I know it’s so, ’cause I seed ’em and felt ’em grab me. Pap, if you’ll take an ax an’ chop down one of them doors, you’ll find ’em an’ your money, too.”
Luke Redman thought this a suggestion worth acting upon. He disappeared in the house, followed by the boys, who could scarcely find words with which to express their amazement. They understood now why their hounds had followed the back track, and wondered at the stupidity we had exhibited in returning to our prison after once escaping from it.
This much we gathered from their conversation, every word of which we heard distinctly.
Do you believe you can tell by the way a man walks whether or not he is angry? I have thought I could; and any one who had heard Luke Redman coming up those stairs would have known that he was almost boiling over with fury.
He came thundering along as though he were shod with iron. Arriving at our door, he pounded upon it with some heavy implement—the ax, probably—and called out:
“Hay, Tommy, and you, Mark, open this door to onct. Hear me, don’t you?”
Of course we heard him—we could have distinctly heard every word he uttered if we had been standing on the other side of the island—but it was no part of our plan to reply to him. Our object was to delay his operations by every means in our power.
“You needn’t try to pull the wool over my eyes by keepin’ so still,” he continued, in a very savage tone, “’cause I know you are thar, an’ I jest ain’t a-goin’ to stand no foolin’. This is the last time I shall speak to you. If you don’t open this door, I’ll cut it down, snake you both out by the neck, an’ give you the wust whoppin’ you ever heern tell on. Hear me, don’t you?”
Still no response.
Tom stood with his hands clasped over the muzzle of his gun and his eyes fixed upon the plank which secured the door, while I was watching the hinges, and waiting to see them driven from their fastenings by blows from the ax.