“'How do I know what it was?” he replied. “I left one of my socks and took the boot in my hand. It was all the gun or anything o' that kind I had. I left my neckhan'ketcher, too.”
“But you didn't get out of the window,” objected Bobaday eagerly. “They always have a hole dug, you know, right under the window, to catch folks in.”
“Yes, I did,” responded Zene, leaping a possible hole in his account. “I guess I cleared forty rod, and I come down on all-fours behind a straw-pile right in the stable-lot.”
“Did the thing follow you?”
“Before I could turn around and look, I see that man and that woman leadin' our horses away from the grove where I'd tied 'em to the feed-box.”
“What for?” inquired Robert Day.
Zene cast a compassionate glance at his small companion.
“What do folks ever lead critters away in the night for?” he hinted.
“Sometimes to water and feed them.”
“I s'ze to myself,” continued Zene, ignoring this absurd supposition, “'now, if they puts the horses in their stable, they means to keep the wagon too, and make way with me so no one will ever know it. But,' I s'ze, 'if they tries to lead the horses off somewhere for to hide 'em, then that's all they want, and they'll pretend in the morning to have lost stock themselves.'”