When all was ready, and Pat just about to carry out his part of the arrangement, Henri, who, it happened, had been selected for the victim of the boys, suddenly sat up, and started to stretch, as he yawned sleepily.
Imagine his amazement at seeing three crouching figures within a few feet of him, while two muskets were levelled at his head. Stricken dumb with surprise he could only stare and gasp.
Meanwhile Pat was not idle. With a leap that a panther might have envied he was upon the second figure. Jacques Larue had not the faintest chance. Taken utterly unawares, and at a complete disadvantage, he was as putty in the hands of the stalwart Irish trapper, even though himself a man of sinew.
“Don’t so much as move a hand except to raise them above your head, Henri Lacroix, or you are a dead man!” exclaimed Bob, sternly.
True, these two were only boys, but the Frenchman knew to his sorrow that they were to be feared just as much as men. And it was almost ludicrous to see how quickly he elevated his hands, and made motions with his head to indicate that he gave in.
After that it was no hard task to bind the trappers, though first of all their weapons were taken. They looked alarmed, as indeed they had good cause for being, since they had long been a thorn in the flesh of these English settlers, and might expect to be treated harshly. And doubtless they both remembered with regret how they had just lately done a rascally deed, for which these three might well demand their lives as a recompense.
Had they not known that Pat O’Mara must have trailed them from the place where they set the dugout adrift, containing Mr. Armstrong’s daughter, Jacques Larue and Henri Lacroix might have stoutly denied all knowledge of the crime. As it was they kept their lips sealed, and remained mute.
When, however, Bob and Sandy, astonished and chagrined at not finding the wampum belt upon either of the Frenchmen, although they recovered most of the little keepsakes lost by their mother, demanded to know where it had been hidden, Jacques took it upon himself to explain, with many extravagant shrugs of his broad shoulders; for even in those days his countrymen, even as now, do considerable of their talking with gestures.
“I haf not seen ze belt since last night!” he declared. “Ven I allow myself to go to sleep she is here about my vaist as before; yet, sacré! it amaze me to find ven I am open my eyes dis same morning zat ze belt no longer adorn my person. So it seem zat while I sleep some unknown von, he crawl into ze camp, and take avay ze belt, and me not any ze wiser. I feel nossings, know nossings, only ze belt she be disappear.”
“Did you not suspect that your friend, Henri here, might have taken a notion to take the belt and hide it?” asked Bob, as soon as he could recover from the shock which this declaration gave him.