The leader smiled whimsically and turned away. After talking for some moments with the only man present in the camp, he turned to the west and disappeared. Then the man he had last talked with approached the boy.
“What do you want for breakfast?” he asked.
“Pie!” roared Clay. “Green apple pie, red apple pie, dried apple pie, and pie pie. And if you’ve got any chicken pie, that will come in all right later on.”
“Your troubles don’t seem to affect your appetite, kid,” laughed the man whom Clay discovered to be the cook of the camp. “You’re a jolly kind of a fellow, anyway, and I’m going to give you the best there is in the larder.”
In half an hour a really good breakfast of ham and eggs, potatoes, bread and butter, and coffee was served to the boy. He ate heartily, of course, as most boys will under any circumstances, talking with the cook as the meal proceeded.
Directly the leader came to the edge of the little glade and beckoned to the cook. The latter looked from his employer to the boy and back again. The leader beckoned imperatively, and the cook left the tent and approached him. Together they stepped away into the edge of the thicket and engaged in an animated conversation.
Clay heard the leader ask if the ropes which held his hands and feet were still in place, and heard the cook reply that he supposed they were as he had not examined them.
“Just for the fun of the thing, now,” Clay mused, “I’ll find out whether that chap is right.”
He pulled away at the cords on his wrist, but for a long time was unable to move them beyond the limit of the motion which had enabled him to use a fork at his breakfast.
“I wonder,” he thought, “why they didn’t give me a knife to eat that ham with. Never mind, I can make a knife of my own.”