“Yes; I seen them all,” replied Sparwick, in a peculiar tone. “Your pardner is in a bad way.”
“What do you mean?” cried Hamp and Jerry, in one breath.
Sparwick hesitated an instant to get his wind. Then he related, just as the reader already knows it, the assault on Brick, and the lad’s subsequent abduction.
“How I come ter see it was this way,” he explained, in conclusion. “I traveled purty fast arter leavin’ the Mallowgash, and when I reached that clearing back yonder, I was nearly done out. So I dropped down in the timber an’ bushes for a rest. I hadn’t been there more’n half an hour when the two men an’ the lad come along. Then happened what I just finished tellin’ you. The affair was none of my business, and I couldn’t a-helped the young fellow any if I’d wanted to. I struck back in this direction, an’ first thing I knowed, I broke through the crust, an’ found myself under ground. I was huntin’ the way out when you fellers tumbled in.”
The effect of Sparwick’s story upon Jerry and Hamp may be better imagined than described.
“I thought there was something wrong with those men,” exclaimed Hamp, wrathfully. “They’ve been dogging us ever since we came into the woods.”
“But why did they carry Brick off with them after they had all his money?” asked Jerry. “That’s the strange part of the affair.”
“It beats me, too,” admitted Sparwick. “They had his money, sure enough, fur I seen them countin’ it over. Mebbe they took him along for their own safety, an’ mebbe there’s a worse reason——”
“You don’t think they would kill him?” interrupted Jerry, quickly.
Sparwick looked grave.