Black Bart! Rob’s heart stood still and then beat furiously. These men then, were the moonshiners of whom Dale had spoken that afternoon. It seemed, too, from their talk, that they suspected him and Jumbo of being government spies. In that case they would stop at nothing. And they were four to one. The Boy Scout felt for the knife he had filched from Dale, but in their passage through the woods it must have been lost, for he could not find it on him.
“Kid or no kid,” retorted Black Bart, viciously, “he can tell the revenues a story jes’ as well as anybody else, can’t he?”
“That’s so,” agreed the red-headed man, “and if they get us this time they’ll make it hot for us.”
This argument seemed to extinguish all regrets in the blond-bearded man’s mind.
“When air you goin’ ter do it?” he asked. His voice was perfectly matter-of-fact and cold-blooded.
“No time like the present. But it’s best to get ’em asleep. We don’t want no noise,” said Black Bart, with deliberation. “Pinky,” to the pink-eyed man, “jes’ take a look upstairs and see if they are asleep.”
Rob laid down and crouched still as a mouse while he heard Pinky ascend the creaking stairs, satisfy himself that the intended victims were asleep, and retreat again.
Then the boy awakened Jumbo. In a few words he apprised him of the situation. To Rob’s great relief, the negro, in this dire emergency, seemed to be as self-possessed as he was cowardly in minor matters. Many natures are so constituted.
“What we gwine ter do, Marse Rob?” he breathed, crawling noiselessly about on his straw.
“There’s a window over there,” whispered Rob; “we’ll have to drop through it and chance coming out safely.”