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“What you getting up so soon for, Sam?”asked Bill.

“Me?”says I.”Oh, I got a kind of a pain in my shoulder. I thought sitting up would rest it.”

“You’re a liar!”says Bill.”You’re afraid. You was to be burned at sunrise, and you was afraid he’d do it. And he would, too, if he could find a match. Ain’t it awful, Sam? Do you think anybody will pay out money to get a little imp like that back home?”

“Sure,” said I.”A rowdy kid like that is just the kind that parents dote on. Now, you and the Chief get up and cook breakfast, while I go up on the top of this mountain and reconnoitre.”

I went up on the peak of the little mountain and ran my eye over the contiguous vicinity. Over toward Summit I expected to see the sturdy yeomanry of the village armed with scythes and pitchforks beating the countryside for the dastardly kidnappers. But what I saw was a peaceful landscape dotted with one man ploughing with a dun mule. Nobody was dragging the creek; no couriers dashed hither and yon, bringing tidings of no news to the distracted parents. There was a sylvan attitude of somnolent sleepiness pervading that sec
tion of the external outward surface of Alabama that lay exposed to my view.”Perhaps,” says I to myself, “it has not yet been discovered that the wolves have home away the tender lambkin from the fold. Heaven help the wolves!”says I, and I went down the mountain to breakfast.

When I got to the cave I found Bill backed up against the side of it, breathing hard, and the boy threatening to smash him with a rock half as big as a cocoanut.

“He put a red-hot boiled potato down my back,” explained Bill, “and the mashed it with his foot; and I boxed his ears. Have you got a gun about you, Sam?

I took the rock away from the boy and kind of patched up the argument.”I’ll fix you,” says the kid to Bill.”No man ever yet struck the Red Chief but what he got paid for it. You better beware!”

After breakfast the kid takes a piece of leather with strings wrapped around it out of his pocket and goes outside the cave unwinding it.

“What’s he up to now?”says Bill, anxiously.”You don’t think he’ll run away, do you, Sam?”

“No fear of it,” says I.”He don’t seem to be much of a home body. But we’ve got to fix up some plan about the ransom. There don’t seem to be much excitement around Summit on account of his disappearance; but maybe they haven’t realized yet that he’s gone. His folks may think he’s spending the night with Aunt Jane or one of the neighbours. Anyhow, he’ll be missed to-day. To-night we must get a message to his father demanding the two thousand dollars for his return.”

Just then we heard a kind Of war-whoop, such as David might have emitted when he knocked out the champion Goliath. It was a sling that Red Chief had pulled out of his pocket, and he was whirling it around his head.

I dodged, and heard a heavy thud and a kind of a sigh from Bill, like a horse gives out when you take his saddle off. A niggerhead rock the size of an egg had caught Bill just behind his left ear. He loosened himself all over and fell in the fire across the frying pan of hot water for washing the dishes. I dragged him out and poured cold water on his head for half an hour.

By and by, Bill sits up and feels behind his ear and says: “Sam, do you know who my favourite Biblical character is?”