“Then why didn’t you let him go?” demanded Enoch, who did the most of the talking. Jones and Lester were so nearly stunned by the startling piece of news Barr had brought them, that they hardly knew what they were doing.
“We couldn’t let him go, kase we’d gone too far,” replied the duck-shooter. “He’d have taken the law on us the minute he got loose. Now, Brigham, what are you going to do about it?”
“He won’t do anything about it,” said Enoch, who saw that Lester could not speak for himself. “He didn’t tell you that he wanted Don Gordon shanghaied and sent off to China, and if you have done any such mad work as that, which I don’t believe, you need not expect him to pay you for it.”
“That’s it,” cried Lester, who was quick to catch at the idea Enoch had thrown out. “You never did it. You took advantage of some thoughtless words we uttered yesterday, and have cooked up this story to extort money from me. But you have reckoned without your host. I haven’t got a thousand cents; so there, now.”
The duck-shooter’s eye had a dangerous look in it, but he answered very calmly:
“You can’t creep out of no little hole like that. I done the work you said you wanted done, and it won’t be long before you will hear somebody else say so. After you have had time to find out that I have told you the truth, I shall come for my money, and I expect to get it, too. I do, for a fact.”
So saying, Barr sat down in his canoe and paddled away, leaving three badly frightened boys behind him. They were so bewildered that they could not think clearly. The only facts they could grasp were that Don Gordon had been kidnapped and shipped off to China, and that Barr wanted a thousand dollars for it. Enoch, as before, was the first to speak.
“Lester,” said he, “if that man told the truth, I wouldn’t be in your boots for all the money there is in America.”
“Neither would I,” Jones managed to articulate.
“I never said ‘thousand dollars’ to him once,” exclaimed Lester, with a little show of spirit. “I don’t believe he would dare do such a thing, any way.”