“He might have been. The fact is, I thought I recognized the voice of the spokesman.”
“There!” Alex. exclaimed. “I had that same notion. Mose,” he added, turning to the negro boy, “was that the man who threw you and the dog into the water?”
“Ah sure done thought so!” was the reply.
“You think it was Sam, the Robber, the man who accompanied Red?” asked Jule.
“I didn’t know but it might be!” answered Clay, and Alex. at once insisted that it was the same man. Mose was ready to swear to the fellow’s identity by this time!
“Tell us how he looked after the black was washed off,” requested Clay, after a short pause, during which the three men compared notes—mental notes—of their impressions of the man they had left in the lonely grave in the swamp.
“We have decided on one word that expresses our thought of the man,” Gregg finally replied. “You know that all human beings in some manner resemble some wild animal species. Some men are lions, some are monkeys, some are dogs, some are bears, some are foxes. Well, this man was a fox!”
“I thought so,” Clay exclaimed. “I thought the fellow’s voice sounded like Sam’s.”
“There are many men with fox-faces,” Gregg warned. “This man may not have been the individual you refer to as Sam. If he is an enemy of yours, keep looking for him.”
With this bit of good advice the matter was dropped for the time. The steamer was no longer in sight, but the Rambler was kept on her way to the Gulf.