Nelson nodded. He was more than willing to get away with a whole skin. He managed to turn the team around in the willows, and started back, holding the team to a slow walk.
The man mounted behind June, but before they started out he blindfolded her with a none too clean handkerchief.
Then they rode out of the river bottom, forded the river and headed into the hills. June knew this, because the horse was climbing most of the way. There was no conversation. The bandit guided the horse, with an arm on each side of June. He had been drinking, but not enough to give him more than a whisky breath.
It seemed to June that they had been riding about an hour, when the horses fairly slid downward for considerable distance, traveled along for a while on level ground and stopped. The men dismounted and lifted June off the saddle, guiding her into a cabin, where they removed the blindfold.
It was a small log cabin, crudely furnished, with a dirt floor. It smelled musty in there. June blinked painfully as she looked around at the two men. One of them secured a length of lariat-rope with which he roped her tightly to a chair. He knew how to knot ropes, and when he was finished there was no possible way for June to escape. The other man inspected the knots and nodded his approval.
“That’s the old Injun knot,” he growled. “No squaw ever wiggled loose from one like that.”
The other laughed.
“You’ll stay here quite a while,” he told June. “No use to yelp. There ain’t a man within miles of here. When Jack Silver does a job, he does it well. Park Reber can hunt and be ⸺ to him, but he’ll never find yuh. We’re goin’ away, but we’ll be back tonight some time and bring some feed for yuh.”
They turned abruptly and left the cabin, closing the door behind them. June heard the creak of their saddles and the sound of the horses walking away. She tried to loosen her bonds, but she soon found that there was nothing to do but to sit and wait.
She wanted to cry, to scream for help. But she knew that it would not help matters in the least. She was going to need all her nerve. She wondered what Park Reber would do. What could he do, she wondered? It might take them weeks to find her. Jack Silver had outwitted him again.