Jim's eyes wavered, then shot a desperate, hunted look around over the crowd. But by a great effort he controlled himself.
"Oh, very well. Yes," he replied, with as much carelessness as he could assume. "I'll go."
The horses of the guerilla gang were tied a few yards back in the timber. The boys were led to them and mounted, each one riding between two guards; and then the party, forming in a rough column of fours, started out. They soon emerged from the woods, passed up through a ravine and so out upon the bluffs, where presently they turned into a faintly marked country road running to the southeast, toward Arrow Rock. For hours they travelled, alternately at a trot and a walk, through the pretty, rolling country of Saline County, now passing among stretches of forest, gay with the foliage of Autumn, and again moving across reaches of open land, dotted here and there with little farms, most of them deserted and falling to decay. But always they avoided the main roads and often they travelled across the fields, through ravines and along the lower edge of ridges, making it evident that these men possessed a knowledge of the country as intimate as that of the Sioux in the Northwest.
The boys were held near the centre of the column, and several files ahead of them was Jim, who rode along easily, slouching in the saddle and yielding to the motions of his horse as if accustomed to it through long practice. It was noticeable to the boys that the short man held a place in column immediately behind Jim; for this guerilla company appeared to have no regular formation, and the men fell in wherever they chose, sometimes even changing their places on the march.
Toward evening the gang approached Arrow Rock and were halted by a picket in the edge of the little town. The officer of the guard, a young man in the full uniform of a Confederate lieutenant, came out to meet Yeager, who had ridden to the front.
"Is General Price's army here?" asked Yeager.
"Yes," answered the Lieutenant. "Who are you?"
"Captain Yeager and command, with Yankee prisoners."
"Captain Yeager? Of whose regiment?"