An embarrassing moment followed. Ted looked around at the sober-faced slackers and their eyes fell before him. They had been thrilled, horrified, stirred with anger and feelings of outrage; but they were not ready to face the question they feared the persistent and plucky boy would put to them. They shifted their positions uneasily, began to get on their feet, and then in twos and threes went hurriedly off to bed, anxious to escape another direct appeal.
"You put up a great talk and you sort of got hold of some of them this time," whispered Hubert; "but you see—as I've told you before—that it won't do any good."
"Maybe it will—after a while," said Ted, his eyes still glowing.
Buck Hardy now reappeared and called back two of the retreating slackers. With their help, and without a word, he lifted Ted and carried him up the ladder to his bed in the sleeping-loft.
XIII
TED heard the slackers leave the sleeping-loft early the next morning, but he did not stir. He knew that he ought to keep quiet, and, after reluctantly resigning himself to the necessity, he turned slightly on his bed of Spanish moss and fell asleep again. When he awoke he was alone in the loft. A few minutes later July appeared with his breakfast, telling him that all the slackers had "done gone" and that Hubert was "frolicin' wid Billy."
"Mr. Buck Hardy say you mus' stay in dat bed all day," the negro informed him, adding: "Mr. Hardy sho is hurted in his mind. He don't say a word hardly. When I woke up late in de night las' night I seen him standin' out dere by de fire thinkin'. I reckon he studyin' 'bout dat waw an' all you tole him."
Buck's reported disturbance of mind was Ted's only comfort during the long, tiresome day, for he felt confident that he knew the cause and was hopeful of the issue. Hubert, Billy and July visited him several times during the day, and at dinner time Buck Hardy, Al Peters and Bud Jones all spent a few minutes at his bedside, doing their best to cheer him up; but the boy spent some lonely hours and the consciousness of his and Hubert's captivity oppressed him as at no time during the previous days of activity and diversion. What was to be the end of it? Did their disappearance cause alarm at Judge Ridgway's farm? Had his uncle returned from Washington, and, if so, what did he think, and what would he do?
It was very hard to lie quiet and just think, think, think. But the next day Ted was glad he had done so, for he found that the complete rest, aided perhaps by the salve made of bear's marrow, had had a wonderfully healing effect. He could stand on his injured foot without pain and was able to walk with a limp. The two succeeding days, spent very quietly about the camp, were much less hard to endure, and on the fourth day he was almost himself again.