CHAPTER XII.
BANDS OF BLACK.
A bitterly cold night was closing in when Ree reached the cabin.
“I rather guess there will be no prowlers around this evening,” he remarked, as he shook the snow from his coonskin cap in front of the roaring fireplace, and held his hands to the blaze to warm them.
“Ree,” said John, ignoring the remark, “Mr. Hatch wants a feather bed. We were talking about it as you came in. I told him we could make him one from turkey feathers.”
“So we can,” was the answer. “We’ll begin saving feathers right away.”
“It is because I have decided to remain here until I can go in quest of the rascals who have the missing part of my aunt’s letter,” the Quaker put in, very seriously. “For poor Ichabod is dead—dead and gone—and the money, lads, is mine—all mine. Oh, I must obtain the paper which was stolen from me! All mine—the money and all—it is all mine,” he murmured, and from time to time repeated—“All mine—all mine!”
Much thinking of the hidden treasure and his assertion that he was the only creature known to be alive who had any valid claim to the fortune, seemed fast to be making Theodore Hatch a covetous, disagreeable old man. He had changed wonderfully in the short time since the boys had known him.
“Thou shalt stay as long as we do, if thou likest, friend,” said Ree, adopting the Quaker manner of speaking. “But the Indians have fought a great battle near the Wabash river and sadly defeated General St. Clair and his troops. What the result will be as concerns ourselves, we must wait and see.”
“What’s that?” John exclaimed.
All that he had learned from Gentle Maiden, Ree then told his friends, and he told them also of the destitute circumstances in which he found the people still remaining in Captain Pipe’s village.