It was daylight when John awoke, the bonds upon his wrists and ankles instantly, painfully reminding him of where he was and bringing to his mind the unhappy recollection of all that had happened. Neither Duff nor Dexter was on the bed beside him, and, rolling over, he looked around. There sat Dexter on the log by the fire.
“Hi, there!” called John.
“Jest don’t you say nothin’. I’m to knock yer blasted brains out if ye holler, er say a word. Them’s Duff’s own words. Lay still an’ don’t say nothin’ an’ I won’t do ye no harm, an’ I’ll git ye a bite to eat.”
So saying Dexter sliced off a few cuts of meat from a nearly consumed fore quarter of a deer and prepared it for the prisoner.
“It was too bad Quilling was killed the way he was,” said John, as he ate, wishing to appear friendly, for he believed Dexter was not at heart nearly so villainous as his companion.
“Bub, jest you shet up. Ye ain’t allowed to say nothin’. Them’s the orders.”
But after a pause of several minutes, Dexter added: “Duff didn’t say as I couldn’t talk none, though, an’ I kin say yes, ’twas too bad as Quilling got killed. But it was his own fault. When Duff goes to yer hut as an Injun, plannin’ to get what he was after, an’ left me an’ Quilling at the edge o’ the woods t’ help him if he needed it, or to draw you chaps out some way, an’ give him a better chance, if he didn’t come back by midnight, Quilling an’ me stood under a tree with low limbs where we wouldn’t be seen by anybody. Then Quilling got scared—allus was a blamed baby anyhow,—an’ he begun to chatter an’ talk ’bout how he wished he had stayed to home. ‘An’ I’m goin’ to holler to Duff this minute that I want t’ go home an’ he’s got t’ go with me,’ he says, speakin’ up loud. An’ with that he steps out into the clearin’, when ‘bang!’ he tumbled over like a rabbit, an’ in a jiffy there come pouncin’ onto him a devil of an Injun that has been hangin’ round these parts a long time.
“An’ this Injun ain’t no nat’ral critter at all. He comes an’ goes too quick fer that. He’s a Injun witch, that’s what he is, an’ ’fore I knew it I was yellin’ ‘help,’ an’ hootin’ like a owl, which was the sign agreed on to call Duff out if we had to have him; an’ then I goes racin’ into the woods like all get out. Duff comes runnin’ after me, cursin’ awful, he was that mad. But he knew Quilling was a goner an’ we—we jest lit out fer our cave here. We was watchin’ from the woods when you an’ the Quaker chap started out to the Injun town an’ then it was that Duff says we would ketch ye, an’ we did, an’ what’s next to be did is fer me to know an’ you to find out, as the sayin’ is.”
John, it is sure, was greatly interested in what he had heard. And now, as Dexter showed no signs of speaking further, though he seemed to like to hear his own tongue going, the captive tried hard to think of some seemingly innocent question or remark which would start the fellow talking once more. At last he said:
“Honest truth, Mr. Dexter, I was not spying on you that night away back at the Eagle tavern when I went for a drink of water and found you and Duff and Quilling reading a letter.”