Nurse Jones had turned very white, and put her hand to her throat, as though she felt herself choking. Hugh, however, forgot her in the excitement of the moment.
“Do you mean to tell us, Mr. Sheriff,” he asked, as soon as he could command his voice, “that the boy is lost?”
“Either strayed away, or else he’s been kidnapped for a purpose!”
As the sheriff said this very sternly he fastened his accusing eyes on the old padrone. There could be no mistaking his meaning. He had dealt many times with some of these foreigners, and he knew only too well that they often had strange and un-American ways of accomplishing their purposes.
Just as Hugh and some of the boys had said in generally talking things over, carrying people off and holding them for a ransom has long been a custom in various lands of Europe. Evidently the officer believed these angry strikers, feeling they could not win their case in the ordinary way, had determined to resort to such a miserable game as this abduction of the child would be.
The affection felt by Mr. Campertown for his grandson must have been evident to every member of that crowd standing by at the time the sheriff and his posse had stopped for a minute or two on the way to oust the hired guards. It would not be unreasonable to suppose that some of the wilder spirits among the men rendered furious by a contemplation of their supposed wrongs, and the presence of those wounded comrades, should plan to hit back at the rich man in his only vulnerable spot.
Hugh turned his eyes on the padrone. He felt a sudden chill in the region of his heart. Could the wily old man be guilty? Hugh had somehow come to rather like the padrone who had such singular power over his people that he usually could sway them to his way of thinking.
He felt it was almost impossible that the old leader should have consented to sit there at their campfire and partake of their food, if he were guilty of such a terrible thing.
Hugh immediately felt reassured as soon as he looked at the other. The swarthy face of the padrone was drawn, and Hugh thought there was an expression of injured pride upon it. His eyes flashed fire, and, as he drew himself up, he tried to express his feelings in his crude way.
“Eet ees that you believe some of my people they haf been take the kid away to hold heem ofer the head of the gentlemans. You do us great wrong. We haf not yet been brought to the point that we make the war on children! And, eef ees be done, sure I must know of that same. I gif you my word not.”