“Now, I’ll tell you what’s the matter,” said Sandy; “’tain’t the least trouble in the world. If we should untie your hands, you might jump up an’ run out in the rain, an’ get wet ag’in; an’ that would be redikilis. I’ll tend to him, fellers.”
Sandy seated himself beside the prisoner, and our cook, having passed around the pieces of bark, we fell to work in earnest.
In a very few minutes the last bone had been picked clean, and we sat looking wistfully at our empty “plates,” as if half expecting to see them filled up again in some mysterious manner; but as nothing of the kind happened, we threw them into the fire, and once more stretching ourselves out on the leaves, listened in a dreamy sort of way to the rain and sleet pattering on the roof.
“Don’t go to sleep yet, boys,” said Duke, seeing that some of us began to blink and nod at the fire, as if recognizing in it an old acquaintance. “I have something to say to you.”
As he said this, he crawled into the furthest corner of the shanty, and we followed and gathered about him.
I believed that what he was about to say had some reference to Luke Redman, and the latter must have thought so, too, for he watched us with a great deal of interest.
“I reckon I know what you’re goin’ to talk about,” said he, with a laugh, “an’ I tell you now, as I told you afore, that you’ll never take me to the settlement. I’ll bet a hoss that things’ll be changed here afore long.”
“What do you think of that, fellows?” asked Duke, in a low whisper.
“I think he wants to hear himself talk, and that we have no cause for alarm,” said I.
“That’s my opinion,” observed Herbert. “If he is depending on the Swamp Dragoons to rescue him, he’ll be disappointed, for they never could follow our trail through the woods on a night like this.”