“You’re the brave boy!” snarled the other.
“Look here, Steve,” Ben said, “if you think it’s such a fine stunt to seize a Chicago newsboy, you just go and try it yourself. I’ve had enough of it. And that’s no fairy tale.”
Ben threw himself angrily on the floor of the cave, took a bottle of liquor and a roll of white cloth from under a fur robe which lay in a corner and proceeded to cleanse and bind up his wound. Clay watched him with a smile on his face. Steve was scowling frightfully.
“You needn’t look so pleased over it, young feller,” the outlaw said. “We’ll get that little imp, yet. And we’ll get your boat and your whole crew. And if we have much more trouble, we’ll start a cemetery right here.”
Clay made no reply at the time. He was wondering just how much the outlaws knew of the map. It seemed to him that the person who had drawn the first one might easily draw a second upon the loss of the first. He could not understand why the outlaws were making such strenuous efforts to secure the document when they might have procured a copy.
“What was it you said about a map?” the boy finally asked of Steve who sat now scowling at Ben. “Where did the map come from?”
“It came from a blooming Indian,” was the sullen reply.
The fellow answered the question so promptly that Clay decided that he was merely a cheap tool in the employ of some master mind.
“Well,” the boy went on, “why are you bothering us about it? Why don’t you go and get him to make another?”
Steve hesitated and Clay listened very impatiently indeed for his answer. Finally the outlaw spoke: