Si and Nate ran across the open space to the laurels, and found a little ways in a bushwhacker staggering from pain and loss of blood from a wound in his hip, and making labored efforts to escape.
"I done hit him; I done fetched him; I done knowed jist whar he wuz," exclaimed Nate with boyish exultation.
At the sound of his voice the bushwhacker turned around upon him an ugly, brutal face, full of savage hatred.
"Why, hit's bad ole Wash Barnstable, what burnt daddy's stable with two horses, an' shot brother Wils through the arm. I'll jist job him in the heart with my bayonet," screamed the boy as he recognized the face. His own features became transfigured with rage, and he began fixing his bayonet. Si pushed forward and caught the bushwhacker by the shoulder and tore the gun from his hand. Nate came springing up, with his bayonet pointed directly at the man's heart. Si saw it in time to thrust it aside, saying in wrathful astonishment:
"Nate, you little scoundrel, what do you mean? Would you kill a wounded man?"
"Suttenly I'll done kill him," screamed the boy in a a frenzy of rage. "Why not? He desarves hit, the hell-hound. All of us Hartburns 've said we'd done kill him the minnit we laid eyes on him. Now that I've got him I'm gwine t' finish him."
He made another vicious lunge at the man with his bayonet.
"Indeed you're not," said Si, releasing his hold on the prisoner and catching Nate's gun. "You mustn't kill a wounded man, you young wildcat."
