“We haint agoin’ to harm none on you if we can help it,” said he; “but if you don’t shut up, we’ll tie yer hand and foot; and if that don’t do you no good, we’ll leave you yer to the wolves.”
This threat restored silence. The Pike’s wife drew her head back under cover of the wagon, and the old man wrung his hands and moaned to himself. In their heartfelt sympathy for him, the boys, for the time, forgot that they were prisoners themselves.
“Now, if you’ve come to yer senses, we’ll be movin’,” said Zack. “You two,” nodding to Reuben and Simon, “hitch up the oxen an’ mules, an’ you, Sile, saddle a horse for me an’ you an’ turn the rest loose!”
These orders showed that there was a journey before them, and so the boys, at Archie’s suggestion, began making up their bundles, keeping their eyes on Silas all the while, to see which of their horses he was going to saddle. His first thought evidently was to take the bay; but the horse turned his heels toward him, laid back his ears and looked so savage, that Silas changed his mind, and making a wide circuit around him to get at his head, he drew his knife across the lariats with which he was confined, and set him at liberty. With a joyful neigh the bay kicked up his heels and galloped off, the ends of the lariats streaming in the air behind him. The boys saw it all, but did not speak until they had made up their bundles and thrown them into one of the wagons. Like the man who went twenty miles after a load of sand, and when he reached home, found that his wagon was as empty as when he started, the sand having all leaked out through the cracks, they felt that their knowledge of the English language would not enable them to do the subject justice, so they kept still for a while and thought about it.
“There are five days’ work gone to the bow-wows,” sighed Archie, at length.
“And Frank Nelson, with his black, is still ahead of the hounds,” murmured Featherweight.
“I would be willing to remain a prisoner six months, if the bay had only given Silas one good kick before he left,” said Eugene, savagely. “What shall we say when we get back to the Fort—if we ever do?”
“We’ll say that we caught the horse,” said Archie, with an attempt to appear cheerful, “but that circumstances over which we had no control prevented us from keeping him.”
“Humph!” exclaimed Eugene. “It is just too provoking for anything.”