“I guess that this is my finish,” he bitterly reflected. “I should have been more careful; I did not think that they would return.”
Nick was wrong. It was not Hall and his gang that had returned.
“Sallie, drat you! Why don’t you bring me that rope so that I can tie this critter?”
The tones in which these words were said convinced Nick that the people who had caught him were not members of the Hall band, or, if they were, they talked differently from any of the others.
“I wonder who they are?” asked Nick, of himself.
“Gosh hang it, will you hurry with that rope? I don’t want to sit here all night.”
“I reckon that you are an old crank; I have dropped it.”
“Well, hurry up and find it! I don’t want to sit on this feller; he is too slippery.”
This conversation would have been very amusing to Nick were it not for the fact that his unknown captor was sitting on his head and his face was being pressed down into the mud.
When Nick had recovered his breath, he asked, as best he could, if his captor did not think that it would be a good idea to let him up.