CHAPTER XXVI—THE BACK TRAIL.
It is now time to return to Tom, Jack and their companion, old Joe Picquet. It will be recalled that we left them in a most precarious and startling situation.
From a man apparently sick unto death, the gray, pitiable figure on the cot had been suddenly changed to a vicious, spiteful enemy, as vindictive and apparently as dangerous as a rattlesnake. The very swiftness of the change had taken them so utterly by surprise that, as the rifles of his three followers were trained upon them, our trio of friends were deprived of speech.
Old Joe was the first to recover his faculties. With his eyes blazing furiously from his weather-beaten face, he emitted a roar of rage.
The vials of his wrath were directed against the small gray man—Peabody Dolittle, as he had called himself.
“Boosh! You beeg ras-cal!” he cried. “You beeg liar as well as teef, eh? What you wan’ us do now—eh?”
“Nothing but to give up those skins you took from me and then vamoose,” came the quiet rejoinder from the little gray man, who had lost his Yankee dialect and drawl and who was now on his feet fully dressed except for a coat.
“And if we won’t?” exclaimed Tom, retaining a firm grip on the black fox skin.
He was resolved to keep it at all hazards.
“Why, then,” rejoined the other, with a vindictive snarl, “we shall have to adopt harsh measures. You may consider yourselves my prisoners.”