“Who knows but I have let them go to their death?” answered Rodney. “They don’t know that one party who tried to find that cotton was fired upon in the woods, and I was so provoked at Biglin that I forgot to tell them.”
“W-h-e-w!” whistled Ned. “I never thought of it either. Well, let them go on and find it out for themselves. They wouldn’t have believed you if you had told them. They would have said right away that you were trying to keep them out of the woods, and that would have made them all the more determined to go in. I should be sorry to see any of them shot, but now that I am here I’m going to stay with you and see the thing out.”
Nothing could have suited Rodney Gray better. He was lonely and depressed and felt the need of cheerful company, so he went with Ned when the latter turned his horse into the stable-yard, and repeated to him every word of the conversation that took place while Mr. Biglin and his friends were at the well.
“There’s just one thing about it,” said Ned, when he had heard the story. “If Biglin hasn’t already got a permit to trade he is certain as he can be that he’s going to have it, and that’s what brought him out here. But I can’t imagine what he meant when he said you might be obliged to tell what you know about him and his record.”
“No more can I, but I should be glad to do it if it were not for bringing Mrs. Turnbull’s name into the muss. Has Biglin got any money, do you think, or does he intend to pay for his cotton in promises? If I were in father’s place I would not take his note for a picayune, for there’s no telling where Biglin will be at the close of the war.”
“That’s so,” assented Ned. “But we’ll not worry about money until we see some in prospect, will we? We haven’t lost the cotton yet.”
And they didn’t lose it that day and neither did Mr. Biglin and his party find it, for the very thing happened that Rodney was afraid of. He and Ned sat on the porch for an hour or more, conversing in low tones and waiting for and dreading something, they could scarcely have told what, when the clatter of hoofs up the road set the hounds’ tongues in motion and took them out to the bars in a body. It took Rodney and Ned out there too, and when they gained the middle of the road they saw three horses bearing down upon them with their bridles and stirrups flying loose in the wind and their saddles empty. A little farther up the highway were a couple of mounted men, who were bending low over the pommels of their saddles, plying their whips as rapidly as they could make their arms move up and down, and a few rods behind them were two more riderless horses. Both men and animals appeared to be frightened out of their senses. The leading horses would not stop, but dashed frantically into the bushes by the roadside rather than permit the two boys to capture them, and the men, as well as the horses that brought up the rear, went by like the wind, and without in the least slackening their headlong flight.
“Well, I do think in my soul! What’s up?” whispered Ned, who had dodged nimbly out of the road to escape being run down.
“There were seven in the party, and only two have returned,” murmured Rodney.
“They must have seen something dreadful in there,” faltered Ned.