"Oh, Billy, don't you want to play a game!" called out Hubert in the most cheerful voice. "Come on, Ted."
Then Hubert jerked Ted to his feet and pulled him away in the direction of the imaginary Billy, who was, in fact, nowhere to be seen. "Don't answer him back," whispered the younger boy urgently. "If you do, we'll have trouble. Keep away from him!"
Thus the incident passed and with it any immediate danger, thanks to Hubert's ready and resolute interference.
The next day at breakfast and dinner July served the boys after the slackers had eaten and scattered—at Hubert's suggestion. And at supper he fed them with Billy at the cook-camp fire about forty feet apart from the fire around which the slackers ate and lounged. Sweet Jackson observed the new arrangement with a mocking smile, looking over at the cook-camp often as he talked merrily with those about him.
"That's right," he called out once. "Stay there with the nigger, where you belong."
Ted started up, furious, but Hubert hung upon him on one side and Billy, giggling and thinking it was a kind of game, hung upon him on the other.
"Don't!" warned Hubert.
And then, as several of the slackers spoke up in protest, Jackson made no further hostile demonstration.
Too outraged to speak, or even to think clearly, Ted soon rose and almost literally staggered off to bed.
"We'll have to go—to-day or to-night," were his first words to Hubert next morning, after a sleepless night.