"This. Just you attempt the slightest bit of compulsion, or the first grain of trickery—try any thing that's not honest, make a move toward abduction, or take a step toward foul play, and I'll lay you dead in your tracks."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean what I say. I give you fair leave and fair warning, too. I don't intend to interfere in any thing she wishes to do, but I mean she shall not do what she doesn't want to do."
"Do you mean to say that you will exert any control over her actions?"
"Yes, just so far as to let her have her own will. She's one of the few persons that I have cared for, and when time stops and the sea gives up its dead, you may, perhaps, see me go back on my dead sister's daughter."
CHAPTER IV.
BILL BLAZE, THE "SNOLLIGOSTER."
At the very edge of the camp-fire lay two men, mutually clutching each other, although hostile operations seemed, for the nonce, to have been suspended. So near to the fire were they that one of them, without relaxing his hold, had been able to give a log thereon a rousing kick which had caused the light to flare up, thus enabling him to obtain a fair view of the other. As Harry Winkle staggered into the circle of light the two men loosened their grips, and with deliberation rose to their feet, one of them returning to its sheath a knife, the other dropping to the ground a hatchet.
"A'mitey Moses, but yer kim neah gittin' a crack across yer skull. What yer want to steal dat hoss fur—eh?"