“Damn! he’s not here, and yet where can he have gone?”
The ejaculation and interrogative were in the voice of Arens Ringgold, uttered in a tone of peevish surprise. Some one was sought for by the party who could not be found. Who that was, the next speaker made manifest.
There was a pause, and then reached my ears the voice of Bill Williams—which I easily recognised, from having heard it but the day before.
“You are sartint, Master Arens, he didn’t sneak back to the fort ’long wi’ the ginral?”
“Sure of it,” replied Master Arens; “I was by the gate as they came in. There were only the two—the general and the commissioner. But the question is, did he leave the hommock along with them? There’s where we played devil’s fool with the business—in not getting here in time, and watching them as they left. But who’d have thought he was going to stay behind them; if I had only known that—You say,” he continued, turning to the mulatto—“you say, Jake, you came direct from the Indian camp? He couldn’t have passed you on the path.”
“Carajo! Señor Aren! No?”
The voice, the old Spanish expression of profanity, just as I had heard them in my youth. If there had been doubt of the identity, it was gone. The testimony of my ears confirmed that of my eyes. The speaker was Yellow Jake.
“Straight from Seminole come. Cat no pass me on the road; I see her. Two chiefs me meet. I hide under the palmettoes; they no me see. Carrambo! no.”
“Deuce take it! where can he have gone! There’s no signs of him here. I know he might have a reason for paying a visit to the Indians—that I know; but how has he got round there without Jake seeing him!”
“What’s to hinder him to hev goed round the tother road?”