With a little effort we twisted the bales apart and made comfortable beds from the hay.
It seemed I had slept but a moment when I was seized by a nightmare. I dreamed some monstrous form was bending over me, cursing, breathing flames out of its mouth, and boring a hot, sharpened implement into the centre of my forehead. I woke, to find, that, in part, my dream was true.
There straddled over me an excited man, swearing profusely to keep his courage up. He was pressing the cold muzzle-end of a "forty-four-seventy" into my forehead.
"Come on! Get up, you —— —— ——! Come on out of here, or I'll blow your —— —— —— brains out, do you hear?"
Then I caught myself saying, as if from far away, perfectly calm and composed, and in English that was almost academic—"my dear man, put up your gun and I will go with you quietly. I am only a tramp and not a desperado."
This both puzzled and at the same time reassured my captor ... and made him swear all the louder,—this time, with a note of brave certainty in his tone.
His gun poked me in the back to expedite my exit. I stepped out at the open door into streaming daylight that at first dazzled my eyes. I saw waiting on the track outside a posse of about fifteen citizens.
"Good work, McAndrews," commended one of them, deep-voiced. The others murmured gruff approval.
McAndrews, from conversation that I gathered, was night-watchman in the yards. He had one red-rimmed eye. The other was sightless but had a half-closed leer that seemed to express discreet visual powers.
"Now go on in an' fetch out the other bum," commanded the deep-voiced member of the posse, speaking with authority.