Bill backed away.
"I ain"t, either," he said. Which was another lie.
"Let"s see it," repeated the man. "I might like to make that twenty-five dollars myself."
Now Bill was sorry he had told that first lie. The first is the one that gives the most trouble.
"Who are you?" he said, scared, and backing away some more.
"Never you mind who I am," answered the man--biting his words off short; and he rode right for Bill. He stuck his face forward. It was hard and dark and mean. "Hand--over--that--message. Savvy?"
Bill was nothing but a big bluff and a coward. You would have known that he was a coward, by the lies he had told and by the way he had attacked us. He wilted right down.
"Aw, I was just fooling," he said. "I was going to give it back to "em.
Here "tis. There ain"t no prize offered, anyhow." And he handed it to the man.
The man turned it over in his fingers. We watched. We hoped he"d make them untie us and he"d pa.s.s it to us and tell us to skip. But after he had turned it over and over, he smiled, kind of grimly, and stuck it in his hip pocket.
"I reckon I"d like to make that twenty-five dollars myself," he said.
And then he rode to one side, and dismounted; he loosened the cinches and made ready as if to camp. And they all let him.
Now, that was bad for us, again. The gang had our flags and our burros, and he had our message.
"That"s our message. We"re carrying it through just for fun and for practice," called the general. "It"s no good to anybody except us."
"Bueno," said the man--which is Mexican or Spanish for "Good." He was squatting and building a little fire.
"Aren"t you going to give it to us and make them let us go?"
He grunted. "Don"t bother me. I"m busy."
That was all we could get out of him. Now it was growing dark and cold.
The gang was grumbling and accusing Bill of being "bluffed" and all that, but they didn"t make any effort to attack the man. They all were afraid of him; they didn"t have nerve. They just grumbled and talked of what Bill ought to have done, and proceeded to cook supper and to loaf around. Our hands were behind our backs and we were tied like dogs to trees.
And suddenly, while watching the man, I noticed that he was doing things left-handed, and quick as a wink I saw that the sole of his left shoe was worn through! And if he wasn"t riding a roan horse, he was riding a saddle with bra.s.s-bound stirrups, anyway. A man may trade horses, but he keeps to his own saddle. This was the beaver man! We three Scouts exchanged signs of warning.
"You aren"t going to tie us for all night, are you?" demanded Fitzpatrick.
"Sure," said Bill.
"We"ll give you our parole not to try to escape," offered General Ashley.
"What"s that?"
"We"ll promise," I explained.
Then they all jeered.
"Aw, promise!" they laughed. "We know all about your promises."
"Scouts don"t break their promises," answered the general, hot. "When we give our parole we mean it. And if we decided to try to escape we"d tell you and take the parole back. We want to be untied so we can eat."
"All right. We"ll untie you," said Bill; and I saw him wink at the other fellows.
They did. They loosened our hands--but they put ropes on our feet! We could just walk, and that is all. And Walt (he and Bat were cooking) poked the fire with our flagstaff. Then he sat on the flags! I tell you, we were angry!
"This doesn"t count," sputtered the general, red as fury.
"You gave us your parole if we"d untie you," jeered Bill. "And we did."
"But you tied us up again."
"We didn"t say anything about that. You said if we"d untie you, so you could eat, you wouldn"t run away. Well, we untied you, didn"t we?"
"That isn"t fair. You know what we meant," retorted Fitz.
"We know what you said," they laughed.
"Aw, cut it out," growled the man, from his own fire. "You make too much noise. I"m tired."
"Chuck," called Walt, for supper.
They stuck us between them, and we all ate. Whew, but it was a dirty camp. The dishes weren"t clean and the stuff to eat was messy, and the fellows all swore and talked as bad as they could. It was a shame--and it seemed a bigger shame because here in the park everything was intended to be quiet and neat and ought to make you feel _good_.
After supper they quarreled as to who would wash the dishes, and finally one washed and one wiped, and the rest lay around and smoked pipes and cigarettes. Over at his side of the little park the man had rolled up and was still. But I knew that he was watching, because he was smoking, too.
We couldn"t do anything, even if we had planned to. We might have untied the ropes on our feet, but the gang sat close about us. Then, they had the flags and the burros, and the man had the message; and if they had been wise they would have known that we wouldn"t go far. Of course, we might have hung about and bothered them.
They made each of us sleep with one of them. They had some dirty old quilts, and we all rolled up.
CHAPTER VIII
A NEW USE FOR A CAMERA
We were stiff when we woke in the morning, but we had to lie until the rest of them decided to get up, and then it was hot and late. That was a lazy camp as well as a dirty one. The early morning is the best part of the day, out in the woods, but lots of fellows don"t seem to think so.
I had slept with Bat, and he had snored "most all night. Now as soon as I could raise my head from the old quilts I looked over to see the man.
He wasn"t there. His horse wasn"t there and his fire wasn"t burning. The spot where he had camped was vacant. He had gone, with our message!
I wriggled loose from Bat and woke him, and he swore and tried to make me lie still, but I wouldn"t. Not much!
"Red!" I called, not caring whether I woke anybody else or not. "Red!
General!" I used both names--and I didn"t care for that, either.