“That long-legged beauty yonder told you that I could shoot true, and for once he told the truth. You may keep me here, but it will not be while I can draw trigger or sight along a barrel. Stop!” he added, sternly, as the three men made a motion toward advancing. “The first weapon drawn, or the first step toward me, will be the death-warrant of Miss Clara yonder! Before God, I will shoot her, if I am molested!”
They saw that he was in terrible earnest, and instinctively shrunk back.
“Shell I take him, maje—shell I take him?” hoarsely whispered the old guide, his form crouching and trembling with anger, at the rebel’s audacity.
“No—no, don’t stir, Tom—for your life, don’t!” cried Calhoun, fearfully. “The devil will shoot her if you do! Go, then, if you wish it, but if you harm one of the party, I will hunt you down like a dog! Go, while you can,” he added, bitterly.
“Ha! ha!” laughed Dusky Dick, “you are very generous, Major Calhoun, and I congratulate you upon the facility with which you reverse your decision. I will go, but you may expect me again, very soon. I love Miss Clara too greatly to abandon her so abruptly, for good.”
“Shoot him, father!” cried Clara, as she sprung up behind the huge tree-trunk. “Never mind me—don’t let him brave you so!”
The three men abruptly turned around at this sudden interruption, and then as they saw that the maiden’s maneuver placed her in comparative safety, they quickly drew their weapons; but the guide had vanished, and his taunting laugh of defiance echoed back through the woods.
“After him, Tom—Buenos! and shoot him like a wolf, if you find him!” shouted Calhoun, as the three men dashed through the timber, in the direction from whence had come the insolent laugh.
But their efforts at Dusky Dick’s capture were all in vain, although the majority of the now fully aroused campers set out in pursuit of the fugitive; and one by one they returned to their now cold supper, silent and filled with a dim foreboding of impending peril.
“It’s a bad job, maje, a pesky bad job,” quoth Tom Maxwell, as he helped himself to a fresh supply of the rude but wholesome viands; “an’ I’m dub’ous that it hain’t all over yit. He never shed ’a’ got away—never! But who under the sun would ’a’ thunk he’d ’a’ p’inted them pistils at Miss Clary? The dratted sarpint! Burnin’s too good for sech as he is! Lord—Lord! what’s this world a-comin’ to, when sech pesky critters is made?”