God, Sam Turner, I tell ye you hev made a mistake! That man hev never hed nuthin ter do with the revnoo. He belongs up ter the village with them thar summer folks. It’s bloody murder ef ye hev killed him!”
“What do you know ’bout him?” Turner asked, suspiciously, irritated by her reproof. “I hev never said he didn’t b’long up ter the village. I reckon, now, you must hev thought ’cause he air a revnoo spy that he’d be goin’ ’roun’ through the mountings a-hollerin’ out his bizness ter the owls. I reckon you must hev thought that. Ef he ain’t a revnoo, why war he standin’ with his head agin’ the cabin a-listenin’?”
Browning groaned again, and moved.
“He ain’t so much killed ez he mout be!” Turner declared. “That club didn’t ketch him squar’. He dodged, an’ his shoulder got most o’ it.”
“You’re not goin’ ter strike him ag’in!” Nell screamed, clutching Turner by the arm.
“Who said ez how I war goin’ ter?” he growled, shaking her off. “Yer ole dad’ll do that quick ernuff when he gits back. He’s out now a-aimin’ an’ a-contrivin’ fer a safe plan ter git at this feller, an’ when he gits back, an’ finds that I’ve got him hyar, he’ll be plum tickled out o’ one fit inter fifty!”
He stooped toward Bruce.
“What air you a-goin’ ter do to him, Sam Turner?” Nell demanded, her eyes blazing with a dangerous light.
Turner caught her and hurled her from him.
“Will you quit a-naggin’ of me, Nell Thornton? I’m a-goin’ ter drag him inter t’other room, an’ tie him up fer yer ole dad ter look at when he gits back. I ’low I’ll hev ter tell him, too, that you’ve acted clean crazy over the feller.”
There was no answer to this fling, and Turner, lifting Bruce by the shoulders, dragged him into the adjoining room, the only remaining room of the cabin, with the exception of the garret.
When he had done this, he hunted up a piece of rope, with which he securely tied Browning’s hands and feet. Then he deliberately relighted his pipe, took down a long rifle from its rack, and, seating himself in the doorway in a rude, hickory-bottomed chair, he rested the rifle across his knees, and stared moodily off over the ridges, on which the moonlight now fell with silvery radiance.
CHAPTER VI – NELL RETURNS A KINDNESS
In the little room where Sam Turner had dragged him, Bruce came back at last to the land of sentient things. The moonlight, streaming through a crack in the chinked wall, fell on his white face. His head was racked with splitting pains, and a dull ache made itself unpleasantly felt in his shoulder.
When he sought to move his hands and feet, he found that they were tied. Then memory awakened, and he stared about at the cabin walls, trying to determine where he was, and just what had befallen him.
A heavy snore drew his attention, and he beheld the form of a man stretched across the doorway of his room. There was a rifle by the man’s side, and he had evidently placed himself there to guard against any attempt at escape.
All this was startling enough to Bruce Browning.
“And Merriwell! I was not able to get to him to warn him of his danger! I wonder what has befallen him?”
Almost his first clear thought was of Frank, and the peril which he believed threatened his friend.
He would have groaned aloud in the very agony of mental torture, if a wholesome fear had not restrained him.
“I wonder what has become of Nell?” was his next mental query.
As if in answer, when he looked again he saw her tip-toeing in shoeless feet toward the man who lay in front of the door of his prison. Her thin face seemed unnaturally white and bloodless in the dim light. Her widely distended eyes gleamed like those of some wild animal. In her right hand she held something, which he soon made out to be a knife.
A sense of bewildered fascination fell on Bruce. He forgot the thumping pain in his head and the ache in his shoulder.
“She is going to kill him as he sleeps!” was the horrible thought that seized him.
He moved uneasily, and put out his bound hands, as if to beg her not to do a thing so dreadful. He might have done more, but at that moment her eyes met his. She saw that he was conscious, and put a finger to her lips to enjoin silence.
Browning lay back and stared at her. His mind was not yet entirely clear.
Again she put her fingers across her lips, and took another catlike step toward the sleeping man.
She made no more sound than a gliding shadow. Browning readily might have believed her a ghost, and it is quite certain that Toots, if similarly placed, would have shrieked like a maniac from sheer fright.
With the stealthy silence of a panther creeping on its prey, Nell Thornton advanced toward the open door.
Then Browning saw that her gaze was not fixed so much on the sleeping man as on him, and awoke to a realization of the fact that Nell was trying to come to his rescue, and that the knife was to sever the ropes that held him, and was not intended as a weapon with which to do murder.
He could not restrain the sigh of relief and hope that welled from his heart.
Nell Thornton’s keen ears caught it, and again her finger went to her lips, and she stopped, looking anxiously at the sleeper.
For several seemingly interminable seconds she stood thus, and when Turner did not move, she took another cautious step.
With her eyes fixed on Turner’s upturned face, she stepped warily over his body, and stood in the room at Browning’s side.
The knife gleamed in the moonlight. It was her father’s keen-bladed hunting knife.
“I hev come ter git ye out o’ hyar,” she whispered, laying her lips against Browning’s ear. “Don’t ye so much ez whimper a sound, er – ”
She pointed significantly with the knife toward the sleeping form of Turner.
Then she pressed the blade against the rope that held Browning’s wrists. It was almost as sharp as a razor, and ate through the tough strands with noiseless ease.
She worked quickly, but silently; then stood erect, and pointed toward the door.
Browning moved his head to show that he understood.
“Do ye need ter hev me holp ye?” she whispered, stooping till her lips again touched his ear.
For reply, Browning lifted himself cautiously and struggled slowly to his feet.
She smiled encouragingly, and stepped through the doorway, Bruce following close after her, as silently as he could. Thus he passed over the sleeping form of Sam Turner, and moved toward the outer air.
He scarcely ventured to breathe till they were both outside, under the flooding moonlight.
Here she took him by the hand, without speaking, and hurried him away from the cabin, into a path that led toward the hills and in the direction of the village.
“Hev you a knife?”
