Bill untied the rope that held Dick's arms, but left his feet bound. I was freed entirely, and it felt so good to have the use of all my limbs once more that I pranced round in a rather lively way. Either my antics annoyed Herky-Jerky or he thought it a good opportunity to show his skill with a lasso, for he shot the loop over me so hard that it stung my back.
“I'm all there as a roper!” he said, pulling the lasso tight round my middle. The men all laughed as I tumbled over in the gravel.
“Better keep a half-hitch on the colt,” remarked Bud.
So they left the lasso fast about my waist, and it trailed after me as I walked. Herky-Jerky put me to carrying Dick's breakfast from the campfire up into the cave. This I did with alacrity. Dick and I exchanged commonplace remarks aloud, but we had several little whispers.
“Ken, we may get the drop on them or give them the slip yet,” whispered Dick, in one of these interludes.
This put ideas into my head. There might be a chance for me to escape, if not for Dick. I made up my mind to try if a good chance offered, but I did not want to go alone down that canyon without a gun. Stockton had taken my revolver and hunting-knife, but I still had the little leather case which Hal and I had used so often back on the Susquehanna. Besides a pen-knife this case contained salt and pepper, fishing hooks and lines, matches—a host of little things that a boy who had never been lost might imagine he would need in an emergency. While thinking and planning I sat on the edge of the great hole where the spring was. Suddenly I saw a swirl in the water, and then a splendid spotted fish. It broke water twice. It was two feet long.
“Dick, there's fish in this hole!” I yelled, eagerly.
“Shouldn't wonder,” replied he. “Sure, kid, thet hole's full of trout—speckled trout,” said Herky-Jerky. “But they can't be ketched.”
“Why not?” I demanded. I had not caught little trout in the Pennsylvania hills for nothing. “They eat, don't they? That fish I saw was a whale, and he broke water for a bug. Get me a pole and some bugs or worms!”
When I took out my little case and showed the fishing-line, Herky-Jerky said he would find me some bait.