"Don't know. Most always do, some time. Yuh see a feller as runs away like that ain't got no gun nor nothin'. How c'n he git anythin' tuh eat in the swamps? Now, if 'twas one o' us, as has always lived thar, we'd be able to set snares an' ketch game; but a pore ignorant coon don't know nothin'. Sometimes they jest starves tuh death, rather'n give up."
"Then they must be treated worse than dogs," declared Larry; "because no man, white or black, would prefer to lay down and die, to being caught, if he didn't expect to be terribly punished."
Tony shrugged his shoulders at that.
"Don't jest know," he said; "but I heard folks say as how 'twas a bad place, that turpentine camp, whar the convicts they works out their time. Reckon I done heard the dawgs afore, too."
"Something familiar about their baying, is there?" queried Phil.
"They sure belongs tuh the sheriff," Tony declared; "an' he must a be'n called in by them keepers tuh help hunt this runaway convict."
"The sheriff, Tony—do you mean the same fellow you were telling us about, who dared come to the shingle-makers' settlement downriver, and was tarred and feathered, or rather ridden on a rail, with a warning that he'd get the other if he ever showed his face there again?"
"Them's him," said the swamp boy, with a nod. "His name it's Barker, an' he's a moughty fierce man. But let me tell yuh, he ain't been nigh our place sence. Cause why, he knowed the McGee allers keeps his word."
"Do you suppose he'd know you, Tony?" asked Phil.
"Reckons now, as how he would, seein' as how I had tuh bring him his grub that time he was held in our place. He knowed as I was McGee's boy."