The first thing I heard was a loud laugh, and then:
“How are you, Jud?” said Pike. “Back again, you see. Hope yer feeling all right.”
I saw I might as well make the best of it, though you may be sure I was half scared to death.
“Yes, I’m feeling pretty well,” I said. “I was able to be about the last time you were here, maybe you remember.”
Pike scowled at me. “Yes, that’s so, you was,” he said. “You stood us off in pretty good shape that time–you and the snow. We were fools not to find out that you were all alone. But we app’inted an investigating committee this time, and we’re onto your game. Just excuse me, but I’ll have to ask 204 you to wear a little of Taggart’s jewelry while we tend to some important business.”
He pulled out a pair of handcuffs and slipped one of them around my wrist and shut it up so tight that it pressed into the flesh. Then he led me in front of the counter, slipped the other cuff through a brace under the front edge of the counter, and then clasped it around my other wrist, leaving the short chain which connected the cuffs behind the brace, so that I was a prisoner. He pushed up a chair and said:
“Set down and make yourself comfortable, Jud. I’ll see if I can’t find a handful of buttons for you, and you can put ’em on the counter and play checkers with your nose.”
The men laughed at this, and Pike went on:
“We met your pardner out here, the dark-complected feller. He was a-riding off our pinto that we left here by mistake last winter, with our saddle and things, and a-leading your two broncs, so we just stopped him and gathered ’em in, and I reckon they’re all our’n now, most of ’em, anyhow. And in consideration of our only shooting him around the edges careful like, he give us some valuable information, 205 such as just where you was a-sleeping, Jud, and where we’d find the blacksmith tools, and so forth. That’s the way to get along with an Injun and have everything all easy-going–shoot ’im, very careful, around the edges.”
Again they all laughed, and then went out the back door, which, I noticed, had a small hole cut in it over the bolt big enough to let in a man’s hand. There were five of them, counting Pike. The windows were boarded up and it was dark in the store, but as the door opened I saw that it was quite light outside and that it was snowing.