that had been pronounced upon him the evening before.

I got the knife away from the kid and made him lie down again. But, from
that moment, Bill's spirit was broken. He laid down on his side of the
bed, but he never closed an eye again in sleep as long as that boy was
with us. I dozed off for a while, but along toward sun-up I remembered
that Red Chief had said I was to be burned at the stake at the rising of
the sun. I wasn't nervous or afraid; but I sat up and lit my pipe and
leaned against a rock.

"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 reconnoiter."

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 kidnapers. 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 section 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 borne 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 then
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 ki