“Sure?”
“Sure.”
“Git anything out of him about my niggers?”
“No use, Bill; they’re up to Brown’s camp. Nex’ week they’ll be in Canidy.”
“Well, this one won’t escape,” said Bill, with a great oath, and a black, lowering look at the prisoner.
Without more talk, Warren was lifted to the back of the parson’s horse and firmly bound. Then began a long, wild ride through the night in darkness and silence, bound, helpless, stabbed by every stumble.
Sometimes they trotted on high ground, sometimes the horses were up to their knees in the bog; and once Warren felt a heave of his horse’s flanks, and heard the wash of water as if the animals were swimming. He tried to collect his thoughts; he tried to pray, but his mind would wander, and with the pain from his wound and the loss of blood, he was half-delirious. His thoughts were a jumble of hideous pictures.
Meanwhile, Sam and Dan talked together in whispers.
“Fifteen hundred dollars for the slaves or the slave-stealer, dead or alive, that’s what the Colonel has advertised.”
“A right smart o’ money,” replied Dan, “an’ only eight o’ us to git it.”