"Merrick's red-eyed nigger," Tom exclaimed, when the man paused and looked about as if afraid that he might have said more than he ought. "Why don't you speak it right out? What did I tell you, Mr. Truman? Didn't I say that boy would bear watching? Now, what I want to know of you is, are you going to take that darkey's word in preference to mine?"
This was bringing the matter right home to the visitors, every one of whom was a slaveholder, and would have taken it as an insult if any one had so much as hinted that their evidence was not as good as a black man's.
"Don't get huffy," said the smart man before alluded to. "We haven't played our best card yet. One of you two was riding a roan colt when you came to Merrick's, and there aint no such horse in Truman's stable."
"Did Merrick's nigger tell you that?" asked Tom.
His self-control was surprising. He sat up in his chair and boldly faced his questioner, while Rodney, wishing that the floor might open and let him down into the cellar, told himself more than once that he never would hear the last of that roan colt the longest day he lived.
"No matter who told us," was the reply. "We know it to be a fact. The roan was taken into Merrick's woods, and he wasn't brought out this morning. Did you make a trade with Merrick, or with some of Hobson's friends?"
"If you want to know you had better ask them," answered Tom.
"That's what we intend to do; and we intend, further, that you shall stay with us till we get to the bottom of this thing. There is something about you that isn't just right and we mean to find out what it is."
"I can tell you all about that horse," Rodney interposed.
"It isn't worth while for you to waste your breath, and besides this is a dangerous place to stay, with Price's men scouting around through the neighborhood," said the leader, who now showed a disposition to resume the management of affairs. "It won't take more than two or three days to ride back to Merrick's and from there to Pilot Knob, and straighten everything out in good shape."