"There'd be rations in the knapsacks," mused Lafe, after a pause. He had never been so hungry before in his life.
"What do you say to sneaking down there, and trying to find something to eat?" he suggested. "Come on!" he added persuasively. "There's nobody down there that – nobody that we need be afraid of."
"Vell, I am afraid, dot's all," responded Foldeen.
"They can't do more than make us prisoners," urged the boy, "and that's better than starving to death. Come on! I'm going to make a try."
The German took his companion by the arm. "See here," he explained; "ven dey catch you, dot's all right. You are prisoner; dot's all. Ven dey catch me, den it goes one, two, dree – bang, und den Foldeen Schell addends his own funeral. Dot's the difference by you und me."
"Nonsense!" said Lafe. "They don't shoot anybody in the band."
"Anyhow, dey shoot me out of de band," persisted Foldeen, gloomily. "I was in dot oder army myself, sometimes."
The boy drew a long breath of enlightened surprise, which was almost a whistle.
"Well, then, you stay here," he said, after a little, "and I'll take a look at the thing by myself."
Suiting the action to the word, Lafe laid hold of the stoutest saplings, and lowered himself down by his arms to the ledge below. The footing was not quite easy; but by hanging to the vines he managed to work his way obliquely across the face of the declivity, and yet keep pretty well under cover of the bushes.
Suddenly, emerging from the thicket, he found himself quite inside the breastwork, which he had entered from the open rear. The more terrible signs of the conflict which had been waged here a few hours before forced themselves upon his attention, first of all.
He braced himself to walk past them, and to go straight to the heap of knapsacks piled up among the branches in the corner.
Lifting one of the haversacks, he opened it. There was a tin cup on top, and some woollen things which might be socks. Pushing his hand under these, he came upon some bread, and paused to express his content by a smile.
"Drop it – you!"
A loud, peremptory voice close at his shoulder caused the boy to turn with alarmed abruptness. A burly man, with a rough, sandy stubble of beard about his face, had come into the breastwork – or perhaps had been hidden there all the while.
Lafe's first impulse was one of satisfaction at noting that the stranger wore the blue Union uniform.
Then he looked into the man's face, and the instinct of pleasure died suddenly away.
CHAPTER III.
THE BOUNTY-JUMPER
When Lafe Hornbeck looked into the countenance of the strange man who appeared thus unexpectedly before him in the deserted breastwork, it needed no second glance to tell him that he had to deal with a scoundrel. A threatening and formidable scoundrel he seemed, too, with his heavy, slouching shoulders, his long arms ending in huge, hairy hands, and the surly scowl on his low-browed, frowzy face.
He wore the dark-blue jacket and light-blue trousers of the Federal infantry, and their relative newness showed that he was a fresh recruit. His badge was the Maltese cross of the Fifth Corps, and its color, red, indicated the First Division. This was the corps and division of Boyce's brigade.
Even in the first minute of surprised scrutiny of the fellow Lafe found himself thinking that he probably belonged to that Ohio regiment which he had seen bringing up the rear of the line forming for battle.
"Drop it, I say!" the man repeated, harshly.
Lafe drew his hand from the haversack slowly and reluctantly.
"There's enough more of 'em here," he protested, nodding at the pile in the corner of the earthwork. "I haven't had a mouthful since before sunrise, and I'm hungry."
"Where'd you come from, anyway, and what business have you got here?" the other demanded, with an oath and a forward step.
"I'm Fifth Corps, same as you are," replied Lafe, making an effort to keep his voice bold and firm, "and I came here by tumbling head over heels down that hill there, right spang from top to bottom." He took courage from the indecision apparent in the man's eyes to add, "And that's why I'm going to have something to eat."
The stranger gave a grunt, which, bad-tempered though it was, did not seem to forbid the action, and Lafe drew forth the bread again. It was dry and tasteless enough, but he almost forgot to look at his unwelcome companion in the satisfaction which he had in gulping down the food.
The man lounged over to the pile of haversacks, muskets, and clothing, and seemed to be trying to make out whether anything was missing. He grunted again, and turned to Lafe just as the last crust was disappearing.
"You're a drummer, ain't you?" he said roughly. "Where do you belong?"
Lafe held up his hand to signify that his mouth was too full to talk. "Boyce's brigade," he explained, after a little.
"That ain't what I asked. What's your regiment?"
"Haven't got any regiment," replied Lafe. "I'm in the brigade band."
"Oh!" growled the man, and turned on his heel. The information seemed to relieve his mind, for when he had taken a few loitering steps about the enclosure, and confronted Lafe again, his tone was less quarrelsome. "Left the hospital camp up there, eh?" he asked, with a sidelong nod of his head toward the top of the hill.
"Well, yes – and no," responded the boy. "It was there when I left it, but it ain't there now. Or rather, it is there, but we ain't there."
"What are you driving at?" the man demanded, once more in a rougher voice.
"The rebs have gobbled it," said Lafe. "Our folks were skedaddling and the rebs were coming in the last I saw."
The man gave a low whistle of surprise and interest. He began walking about again, bending his ugly brows in thought meanwhile. From time to time he paused to ask other questions, as to which way the people of the brigade camp had fled, how large was the force which had captured the camp, and the like.
The news evidently impressed him a good deal. Lafe got the idea that somehow it changed his plans. What were these plans? the boy wondered. The whole thing was very hard to make out. More than once he had had it in mind to say that he had left another member of the band, a very nice fellow indeed, up on the side-hill above them, who must also be hungry, and to suggest that he should call him down.
But every time, when this rose to his tongue, a glance at the evil face of the man restrained him. He could not but remember what Foldeen had hinted, that there was some "deviltry" going on down below here. What was it?
"There must have been some pretty tough fighting right here," he ventured to remark, after a while.
"You bet there was!" the other assented. He seemed not averse to a little talk, though his mind was still on other things.
"I don't quite figure it out," the boy went on, cautiously. "Of course, wrastling round in the woods like this, you can't make head nor tail of how things go, or who's on top, or where – but how does it stand – right here, I mean? We're in our own lines here, ain't we?"
The stranger fixed a long, inquiring glance upon the boy's face. Lafe returned the gaze with all the calmness he could muster. He could not help feeling that there was a good deal of stupidity in the stare under which he bore up. The man was not quick-minded; that was clear enough. But it was also plain that he was both a stubborn and a brutal creature.
"Yes," he growled, after he had stared Lafe out of countenance, "yes, these are our own lines."
The phrase seemed to tickle his fancy, for something like the beginning of a grin stirred on the stubbly surface about his mouth. "Yes – our own lines," he repeated. How strange it was! All at once, like a flash, Lafe remembered having seen this man before. That slow, sulky wavering of a grimace on his lips betrayed him. Swiftly pursuing the clue, the boy reconstructed in his mind a scene in which this man had played the chief part.
It must have been in the early part of the previous December – just after the army went into winter quarters behind the line of the Orange railroad, cooped up in its earth-huts all the way from Culpeper Court House to Brandy Station. Lafe had gone over on leave one afternoon to the corps headquarters – it must have been of a Thursday, because there was to be a military execution the next day, and these were always fixed for Friday.
The army was then receiving almost weekly large batches of raw recruits, sent from the big cities, some the product of the draft, others forwarded by the enlistment bureaus. Among these new-comers were many good citizens and patriots; but there were also a great many cowards and a considerable number of scoundrels who made a business of enlisting to get the bounty, deserting as soon as they could, and enlisting again from some other point.
To prevent wholesale desertions, both of the cowards and the "bounty-jumpers," the utmost vigilance was needed. Their best chance to run away was offered by picket duty, when they found themselves posted out in comparative solitude, in the dark, on the very outskirts of the army line.
To checkmate this, a cordon of cavalry had to be drawn still farther out than the pickets – cavalry-men who slept all day, and at night patrolled the uttermost confines of the great camp, watching with all their eyes and ears, ready on the instant to clap spurs and ride down any skulking wretch who could be discovered attempting his escape.
Even in the teeth of this precaution, the attempts were continually made, and it was the rarest event for a Friday to pass without the spectacle of summary punishment being meted out to some captured deserter on the corps' shooting-ground. Often there were more than one of these victims to martial law.
Lafe now remembered how, with a boy's curiosity, he had prowled about the provost marshal's guard quarters, fascinated by the idea that inside the log shanty, where the two sentinels with fixed bayonets walked constantly up and down, there were men condemned to be shot at six the following morning.
Standing around, and gossiping amiably with these sentinels, who shared the common feeling of the army in making pets of the drummer-boys, he had managed at last to get a glimpse at one of these fated prisoners.
A face had appeared at the little window, square-cut in the logs. It was a bad, unkempt face, with a reddish stubble of beard on jaws and cheek. There may have been some rough jest passed by the other prisoners inside the hut, for as the boy watched this face, a grim, mean sort of smile flickered momentarily over it.
Then the face itself disappeared, and left the boy marvelling that a man could grin in presence of the fact that he was to be shot on the morrow.
The smile, and the countenance it played upon for that instant of time, burned themselves into his memory. Lafe racked his brain now for some recollection of having heard that these particular prisoners were reprieved, or had succeeded in escaping from their log jail. His memory was a blank on the subject. Yet he felt sure that the face he had seen at that window was the identical face he now saw before him.
For the life of him, he could not resist the temptation to venture upon this dangerous topic.
"You're one of the new regiments brought over to us from the old First Corps, ain't you?" he asked, with an effort at an ingratiating tone.
The man nodded his head in indifferent assent. He seemed to be listening intently to the sounds of battle in the air. These were reduced now to faint, far-away cracklings of rifle-firing, as if only distant sharpshooters were engaged.
"Suppose this is about the first time you've been under fire, then," Lafe remarked. He added, with a bragging air: "I was all through the Payne's Farm and Mine Run racket last November! That was hot enough, I tell you!"
The man made that inarticulate grunt of contempt which we try to convey by the word humph! "So was I," he growled, "and plenty more fights worse than them."
"Oh, got your discharge and 'listed again?" commented the boy.
Again the stranger turned upon him that steady, dull stare of inquiry – like the gaze of a vicious ox. He seemed satisfied at length with the artlessness of Lafe's countenance, but did not trouble himself to answer his suggestion.
"What do you figure on doin' with yourself?" he abruptly asked the boy, after a pause.
"How do I know?" retorted Lafe. "I'd try and join brigade headquarters, if I knew where they were, but I don't. The next best thing is to try and find some other brigade's headquarters. It's all clear enough outside here now. I guess I'll take some bread with me, and make a break through the woods down the run there. I'll fetch up somewhere, all right."
He bent over the pile of knapsacks, as if to pick one of them up.
"No," the man called out. "Leave 'em alone! You can't take no more of them rations, and you can't go down the run. You can't go anywhere."
Lafe straightened himself. "Why not?" he asked, with an assumption of boldness.
"Because you can't," the other retorted curtly.
"What can I do, then?" Lafe inquired defiantly.
The man looked him over. "You can turn up your toes to the daisies in about another minute, if you don't mind your own business. That's what you can do," he remarked, with an ugly frown.
"What's the use of talking that way?" said Lafe. "I haven't done you any harm, have I?"
"No – and you ain't going to, either," was the reply.
The stranger, as he spoke, took a two-barrelled pistol from his inside jacket-pocket. It was a beautiful weapon, ornamented with a good deal of chased silver. Lafe had seen pistols like this before, in the possession of officers, and knew that they were called Derringers. Private soldiers were not likely to carry weapons of that sort.
He was sure that this man must have stolen the pistol, and the conviction did not assist Lafe to calmness, as he observed the man push one of the hammers back with his thumb to full-cock. It is as bad to be shot by stolen firearms as by those which have been bought and paid for.
The stranger drew from another pocket a gold watch, with a long loop of broad black silk braid hanging from its ring. He held it in the palm of his free hand, and glanced at its open face.
"It must be getting along toward noon," Lafe had the temerity to remark. There were cold shivers through his veins, but he managed to keep his tongue steady. If "cheek" could not help him, nothing could.
"About as nigh noon as you're ever likely to git," said the other, making a pretence of again consulting the watch.
Instinct told the lad with a flashlight swiftness that this looking at the watch was buncombe. Men who really meant to kill did not parade timepieces like that.
"I haven't got anything on me that would be of any use to you," he said, with an immense effort at unconcern. "Even if I had, you wouldn't need a gun to take it away from me."
"You've got a mouth on you," said the man, eying him, "and it'll be of use to me to shut it up."
He lifted the pistol as he spoke, and Lafe instinctively closed his eyes, with a confused rush of thoughts in which he seemed to see his old mother sitting in the garden with the Book on her knees, and also the young Ohio officer, who somehow came in among the tall flowers beside her, and these flowers themselves were the regimental flags which the color-sergeant was unfurling.
Then, as nothing happened, the boy opened his eyes again, and found himself able to look into the two black disks of the Derringer's muzzle without flinching.
He could even look beyond the muzzle, as the barrels sloped downward toward him, and he now saw distinctly that the two little upright steel nipples bore no caps. The discovery made him annoyed at his own cowardice. It was easier now to be bold.
"What's your idea, anyway?" he asked the man, with an added effrontery in his tone. "If you'd been going to shoot, you'd have done it long ago. This thing doesn't scare me at all, and I don't see how it does you any good. What are you getting at, anyhow?"
"I'd as soon shoot you as look at you!" the other declared with angry emphasis, but lowering the weapon.
"Yes, but seeing you ain't going to shoot, what are you going to do?" Lafe put in.
The ruffian eyed him again. "If I agree not to hurt you, will you do what I tell you?" he demanded.
"Well, maybe I will," replied the boy. His spirits rose as his contempt for this slow and shilly-shallying sort of scoundrel increased. "What is it you want me to do?"
"I want you to help me carry some things I've got together over there, on the other side of the creek. Well go over now, and bring 'em back here."
"I'll take another bite of bread, first," it occurred to the boy to say. He lifted a haversack, and shoved in one hand to burrow among its contents, while with his foot, as if by accident, he pushed one of the muskets lengthwise so that he might grab it the more readily if occasion required.
Biting in leisurely fashion on the new crust he had found, Lafe felt emboldened to make the conversation personal.
"That's a mighty fine watch you've got there," he remarked, affably. "I suppose it went with the pistol – sort o' thrown in, like."
The man put the watch back into his trousers pocket. He seemed for a moment disposed to annoyance. Then the furtive, mean grin curled over the lower part of his face. "Yes – it was thrown in," he replied, almost with a chuckle. "Come on," he added. "You can chew that bread as you go along."
"But what am I to get?" the boy queried, slowly turning the crust over to select a place for the next bite. "Do I come in for any watches and silver-mounted Derringers, too?"
"You jest help me for all you're worth," replied the man, after a moment's pause, "and I'll see to it you git something worth your while."
"It's got to be something pretty good," said Lafe, meditatively chewing on the hard bread. "A fellow can't be expected to risk the chance of being shot for nothing."
"There ain't no danger of gittin' shot," the other replied.
"Well, hung, then," Lafe said impudently.
"What's that you say?" the man growled, with reawakened suspicion. "Who said anything about hangin'? What kind o' nonsense are you talkin', anyway?"
It might be a desperately foolish thing to do, but Lafe could not hold himself from doing it – and for that matter didn't try.
"Why, they hang men caught robbing the dead on battle-fields, don't they – specially when they're bounty-jumpers to begin with?"
He had called this out as swiftly as he could, holding himself in readiness as he spoke, and now he pounced downward, and clutching the musket, lifted it for defence.
The man sprang forward with a quicker motion than the boy had counted upon, and before Lafe had got erect he felt the stifling grasp of big, hard fingers around his throat.
CHAPTER IV.
RED PETE IN CAPTIVITY
Things grew black before Lafe's eyes as the iron clutch about his throat tightened. He strove desperately to twist himself loose, using in a frantic way the wrestling tricks he knew; but the grip of the bounty-jumper was too powerful. Lafe's head seemed swelling in the effort to burst, and feeling in all his body below that fatal circlet became numb. There was room for but a single thought – this was what being choked to death meant!
Afterward it never seemed to the boy that he entirely lost consciousness. He could remember that there was a violent sidewise jerk at his neck, and then the sense of intolerable squeezing there ceased. But there was still an awful buzzing inside his head, and midnight blackness, shot with interlacing lines of crazy light, spread itself indefinitely about him.
Gradually he perceived that he was breathing again, and that he could feel his arms and legs once more to be parts of him. He knew that he was exceedingly tired and sleepy, and felt only that the one desirable thing was to lie still, just as he was. He mentally resolved that he would not stir nor open his eyes for anybody.
"How vas it mit you, Lafe?"
The words were undoubtedly in the air. He realized that, and lay very still, lazily confident that he would hear them again.
Things began to assort themselves in his brain. Foldeen and he had been on a big, overhanging rock, which had tumbled with them, and by some chance they hadn't both been killed, and now Foldeen was looking for him. But he would lie still and rest.
"Vake up! Lafe! Vake up!"
The boy heard these words, too. The heavy drowsiness upon him seemed to be lifting, and he felt some one fumbling at his breast, inside his shirt. On the instant he was awake and sitting up, wonderingly staring.
A tall figure had risen away from him as he opened his eyes. The sun had come out, and was falling warm and full upon the mass of young green which covered the hillside. This erect standing figure was for a moment or two very indistinct against the dazzling light. Then Lafe made out that this was Foldeen.
Almost in the same glance he saw that he was sitting among the heap of knapsacks and battle-field débris in the corner of the breastwork. Close beside him – so near that he felt he must have been lying upon him when he recovered consciousness – sprawled the burly figure of the bounty-jumper, face downward, and quite still.
Lafe was so contented with the spectacle on which his eyes rested that it did not occur to him to ask what had happened.
It was pleasanter to look at Foldeen's honest face, beaming satisfaction back into the boy's slow and inquiring regard. The German said nothing, but just smiled at Lafe.
As the boy's memory cleared itself, the fact that Foldeen had had no breakfast, and that he had left him in his covert on the hillside with very little compunction, rose above everything else.
Lafe pointed to the knapsacks, and attempted to speak. His throat and windpipe, the roots of his tongue and everything else involved in vocal sounds, seemed at the effort to shrivel up in pain. At first he thought he could not manage to utter a syllable. Then, at the cost of some suffering, he forced out the words, "Bread – there." They sounded quite strange in his ears.
Foldeen nodded his head, still with the jubilant grin on his round, kindly face. "Ya vole," he said, in a matter-of-fact way. "But first I fix me up dis fellow dight."
He sorted out of the pile of stolen property two officers' sashes of knitted crimson silk, and kneeling down beside the outstretched form of the bounty-jumper, proceeded calmly to bind his legs together at the ankles with one of them.
Then, with some roughness, he dragged the prostrate man's arms together till their wrists met on the small of his back, and there tied them securely.
"He ain't dead, then?" commented Lafe, his throat feeling easier.
"Vell, maybe he is," said Foldeen. "I hit him shtraight by the top of his head mit dot gun-barrel, und he vent down like if he vas a tousand bricks. But it makes nodding. Ven he is dead, den he is good tied up. Ven he is alife, den he is much better tied up. Now ve eat us our breakfast in kviet. Bread, you say? Show me dot bread."
Foldeen needed no showing, but was on the instant wolfing huge mouthfuls from the half-loaf which the nearest haversack furnished. Lafe leaned back and watched him, his mind filled with formless emotions of thanksgiving.
In such intervals as he could spare from the bread, Foldeen lightly told what had happened. From his perch up on the hillside he had seen everything, and though beyond earshot, had been able to follow pretty well what was going on.
When the rascal drew the pistol, Foldeen slipped out from his hiding-place, and began letting himself noiselessly down the hill. He had entered the breastwork just at the critical moment, and had dealt Lafe's assailant a crushing blow on the skull with a gun he picked up. That was all. It was very simple.
"And mighty lucky for me, too!" was the boy's heartfelt comment. "Foldeen, do you know what this fellow here's been doing?"
"I haf some brains on my head. I haf seen his business. He is a dief."
"He got these things together here," said Lafe, "and he told me there was a lot more over on the other side of the creek. He was going to make me help him bring them here. That was what he had the pistol out for. But what beats me is, what did he expect to do with them? A man can't get out of the lines with a load of traps like this, even if he could carry 'em."
For answer Foldeen rose, and turned the sprawling, inert form of his captive over on its back. The pallor of the thief's face, contrasted with the coarse, sandy hair and stubble of beard, made it seem more repellent than ever.
The German bent over to examine this countenance more carefully.
"By jiminy priest! I bet me anydings I know dot man!" he exclaimed, staring downward intently. "Vake up dere, you!" he called out, pushing the recumbent figure with his foot. "I know you, Red Pete! Dot's no use, your making out you vas asleep! Vake up, kvick now!" and he stirred him with his boot again.
"I bet he's dead," said Lafe.
No! The man half opened his eyes and moved his head restlessly. The color came back into his face, the muscles of which were drawn now into an angry scowl by pain. He fell back helpless after an instinctive effort to lift himself to a sitting posture. Then, shifting his head, he discovered the two friends, and fixed upon them a stolid, half-stupefied stare.
"How you like him, dot Red Pete, eh?" Foldeen burst forth, with exultation, never taking his jubilant glance from the face of the wretch on the ground. "Dots a beauty, ain'd it? Dot's a first-glass Ghristmas bresent, eh, to find in your shtocking! Or no, he is too big. Ve hang him on a dree, eh? A nize Ghristmas-dree, all by ourselves, eh? O Red Pete, you vas git the best place by dot dree, right in front, on the biggest branch!"
The man on the ground had been staring upward at the speaker in a puzzled fashion. He had slowly taken in the situation that he was disabled, bound hand and foot, and at the German's mercy. At last he seemed to recall who it was who was talking to him.
"I never done you no harm!" he growled.
"So-o!" ejaculated Foldeen, with loud sarcasm. "Dot vas no harm, eh, dot vas only some little fun, eh, to make me on fire und burn me up mit the rest in dot shteam-boat? Just some funny joke, eh? Veil, den, now I will haf me my funny liddle jokes mit you."
Speaking with such swift volubility that Lafe followed with difficulty the thread of his narrative, Foldeen unfolded a curious tale. Before the war he had drifted about in the South a good deal, playing in orchestras in New Orleans some of the time, and then for whole seasons travelling up and down the Mississippi in the bands of the old passenger steamers.
This man, Red Pete, was a well-known character on the river, too well known all the way from Cairo to the last levee. Sometimes he was in charge of a squad of slaves, sometimes travelling on his own account as a gambler, slave-buyer, or even for a trip as minor boat officer – but always an evil-minded scoundrel.
One night, when they were lying at the wharf under the bluff at Natchez, the cabins of the steamer had been robbed, and fire set to the boat in several places. Those on board barely escaped with their lives, and when they found that Red Pete was missing, every one knew well enough that he was the thief and would-be murderer.
Foldeen believed there had been some search for him, but those were rough times, and he was never tracked down. Then the war came, and Foldeen perforce went into the band of an Arkansas regiment – until the opportunity of making his escape to the Union lines occurred.
During that period of reluctant service with the band which played "Dixie" and "The Bonnie Blue Flag," he had more than once heard of Red Pete as a sort of unattached guerrilla, who, like many other river ruffians, played for his own hand between the lines.
"Und now it looks like dot game of his vas pretty near blayed out, eh?" Foldeen concluded with a chuckle.
Lafe gazed down with loathing upon this burly and powerful desperado, lying in such utter helplessness. He told Foldeen in turn how he had seen this very man in the Fifth Corps "quod" only last winter, condemned to death.
"So-o!" exclaimed the German. "I remember dot. All five deserters und bounty-chumpers dug deir vay out, und gilled a sentinel, und skipped in the night. So-o! Ve don't have us dot private Ghristmas-dree, after all. Ve make Red Pete a bresent to Cheneral Boyce, instead."
"Yes, but where shall we find General Boyce?" Lafe put in.
Moved by a common impulse, the two turned their backs on their prisoner, and went outside the earthwork.
The sky was overcast with shifting clouds again, and gave no hint as to the points of compass. The little valley, strewn with motionless, blue-clad figures, lay wrapped in such silence that they could hear the murmur of the rivulet beyond. On both sides the hills rose steeply, covered with thick, tangled verdure.
Behind and before them the valley lost itself a hundred yards away in dense thickets. A sharp wind had risen, under which the tree-tops moaned. Above the noises of the gathering gale, faint sounds of distant firing could be heard.
"We'd better stay where we are," the boy suggested. "There's been rough-and-tumble fighting all around here, and there's no way of figuring out where our people are. I guess they don't know themselves. If we go hunting round, we're as likely as not to walk into a hornets' nest. I tell you what we'll do. If we can find a piece of white cloth, we'll put it up on a pole out here, and we'll bury these men of ours. Nobody'll touch us, if they come along and find us doing that. Besides, it's the right thing to do."
They turned back into the breastwork, and Lafe, rummaging among the knapsacks, speedily found a roll of bandage-linen which would serve his purpose. He got out more bread as well, and found a scrap of fried bacon. The two ate standing; now that they had a plan, they were all eagerness to put it into operation.
Red Pete had closed his eyes again, and was lying perfectly still. The excitement of his capture having died away, they now scarcely gave him a glance.