“Nary thing.”
His eyes light up with angry suspicion. Again doubts he the fidelity of Darke, or rather is he now certain that the lieutenant is a traitor.
Uttering a fearful oath, he steps inside his tent, taking Chisholm along with him.
“What can it mean, Luke?” he asks, pouring out a glass of brandy, and gulping it down.
“Hanged if I can tell, cap. It looks like you was right in supposin’ they’re gin us the slip. Still it’s queery too, whar they could a goed, and wharf ore they should.”
“There’s nothing so strange about the wherefore; that’s clear enough to me. I suspected Richard Darke, alias Phil Quantrell, would play me false some day, though I didn’t expect it so soon. He don’t want his beauty brought here, lest some of the boys might be takin’ a fancy to her. That’s one reason, but not all. There’s another—to a man like him ’most as strong. He’s rich, leastaways his dad is, an’ he can get as much out o’ the old ’un as he wants,—will have it all in time. He guesses I intended squeezin’ him; an’ thar he was about right, for I did. I’d lay odds that’s the main thing has moved him to cut clear o’ us.”
“A darned mean trick if it is. You gied him protection when he was chased by the sheriffs, an’ now—”
“Now, he won’t need it; though he don’t know that; can’t, I think. If he but knew he ain’t after all a murderer! See here, Luke; he may turn up yet. An’ if so, for the life o’ ye, ye mustn’t tell him who it was we dibbled into the ground up thar. I took care not to let any of them hear his name. You’re the only one as knows it.”
“Ye can trust me, cap. The word Clancy won’t pass through my teeth, till you gie me leave to speak it.”
“Ha!” exclaims Borlasse, suddenly struck with an apprehension. “I never thought of the mulatto. He may have let it out?”