“Stop thar, Mark Coleman,” he shouted. “We owe you a good lickin’, and we’ve follered you too fur to let you get away now. Stop thar, I say, or I’ll let this yere dog at you, an’ he’s a varmint.”
The captain of the Dragoons had got things mixed again. You will remember that when Mark first made his appearance at Dead Man’s Elbow, and discovered Luke Redman in the tree and General Mason’s valise hanging to the rowlock of the skiff, Barney, who was standing on the bluff, had called him Joe Coleman, and threatened to have a settlement with him at some future day, if he did not immediately go back up the bayou, where he came from.
Since then he had found out that he had made a mistake in the boy, and that it was Mark, and not Joe, who had put the authorities on his father’s track.
When he saw me looking over the log at him, he supposed that I was my brother, and the very one he wanted to be revenged upon.
“Stop thar, I tell you,” repeated Barney. “We’re goin’ to squar’ accounts with you now fur findin’ out about that money.”
As I could not see the use of allowing myself to be punished for what Mark had done, if I could help it, I did not stop. I ran faster than ever, and fear lending me wings, I made my way through the bushes at a rate of speed that the fleet-footed Herbert Dickson himself would not have been ashamed of; but before I had taken a dozen steps, a figure, which seemed to rise out of the ground, suddenly appeared before me, and clasped me in its arms.
“Ugh!” exclaimed a familiar voice, “you wouldn’t wrestle the other day; you wrestle now.”
Here was another fellow who took me for my brother. It was Jim, the young savage whom we heard boasting so loudly on the day we visited the Indian camp.
How he happened to be there with the Swamp Dragoons I did not stop to inquire, for he had caught me with a fair back-hold, and was trying to throw me down.
“I am not the boy you challenged to a trial of strength the other day,” said I; “but if you are determined to have a wrestle, and nothing but a wrestle will satisfy you, I think I can accommodate you.”