Among the Brigands

by James De Mille

Then she reached out one of her long, lean, bony, skinny, shrivelled hands, and took Bob by the hair of his head, while with the other she raised her sharp weapon.

CHAPTER IX.

The Cavalcade in Pursuit.—Hopes and Fears.—Theories about the lost Boy.—A new Turn to Affairs.—Explanations.—On to Salerno.—Inquiries.—Baffled.—Fresh Consternation and Despondency.—The last Hope.

Meanwhile the party on donkeys trotted along the road after Bob. At the exclamation from the donkey boy they had all experienced a shock; but soon they recovered from it, and the shock only served as a stimulus to make them push the donkeys onward more rapidly. They rode on for some time without making any remarks, each one looking eagerly forward to see if Bob might reappear; but he had vanished behind a turn in the road, and as they advanced, there were other turns to be encountered, and so they were unable to see him. This began to create uneasiness. At first they all had hoped that Bob would be able to stop the ass, or that the animal, after indulging his paces for a short time, would stop of his own accord; but the farther they went, the more they became convinced that this affair had something serious in it.

At length they reached that long, straight piece of road already mentioned. At one end of this was a rising ground; as they ascended this and reached its summit, they looked ahead, and there, far away before them, was a single rider. They recognized Bob at once. He was more than a mile away; but the sight of him filled them all with joy, and they at once stimulated their donkeys to greater exertions. In spite of the distance that intervened, they all shouted as loud as they could; but of course the distance was too great, and their cries were lost before they reached nearly as far away as Bob. In a short time he turned in the road, and passed out of sight.

They now rode on for a long time, and at length came to the road that led to the mountains, up which Bob had gone. This road was not even noticed by them. They had passed other roads of the same kind, which, like this one, led to the mountains, and attached no more importance to this than to those. In the minds of some of them, however, these side-roads suggested a fear, that Bob's ass might have turned off into some one of them; but of course, as they were all alike, they could not conjecture which one would have been taken by the runaway. As they rode on, they still looked ahead. At every turn in the road they still expected to see the fugitive; and it was not until the donkeys themselves gave signs of fatigue, that they were willing to slacken their pace. But the nature of these donkeys was, after all, but mortal; like other mortal things, they were subject to weakness and fatigue; and as they were now exhausted, their riders were compelled to indulge them with a breathing space, and so they slackened their pace to a walk.

And now they all began to consider the probabilities of Bob's fortunes.

"I'm afraid something's happened," said Clive. "Perhaps he's been thrown."

"Thrown?" cried Frank, cheerily. "Why, if so, we would have found him long ago. But the idea of Bob being thrown from any animal that ever lived is simply absurd. Hell stick to that donkey as long as the donkey runs."

"It seems to me," said David,—who was a very thoughtful and observant boy,—"it seems to me that the donkey may have taken some of those roads that go off to the mountains."