“Oh, ye don’t!” he drew his revolver. “This’ll help you to recklect! Hand ’em over!”
Toby Sam dislodged a stone in his sinuous flight, and it went rolling down the hillside. Hearing it, Black John turned around with a jump of surprise, and stared in the direction of the sound.
Suddenly he felt that perhaps he had not been robbed by the girl, but that some one else was the thief.
With revolver in hand he began to move in the direction of that sound, peering on before him.
But Toby Sam was still as crafty as ever. He had wormed into a black hole, and there he lay, doubled up like an opossum shamming death, and with no more sound.
Black John came within a yard of him, and did not see him.
“I wonder what made that noise?” he muttered. “Somethin’ started a stone. Mebbe a cussed coyote.”
He peered long, on the slope of the hill, returning finally to the cave, when he could discover nothing.
The girl had tried to slip away during his absence, but had become bewildered, and found herself in a “pocket” of the rocky wall, with her way now barred by her captor.
“Come out o’ there!” he snarled. “What you doin’ there?”