ack way and stretching up the river
road at a five-mile gait.

"And not feeling so very bad, neither--walking on di'monds don't have no
such effect. When I had gone fifteen minutes I says to myself, there's
more'n a mile behind me, and everything quiet. Another five minutes and
I says there's considerable more land behind me now, and there's a man
back there that's begun to wonder what's the trouble. Another five and
I says to myself he's getting real uneasy--he's walking the floor now.
Another five, and I says to myself, there's two mile and a half behind
me, and he's AWFUL uneasy--beginning to cuss, I reckon. Pretty soon I
says to myself, forty minutes gone--he KNOWS there's something up! Fifty
minutes--the truth's a-busting on him now! he is reckoning I found the
di'monds whilst we was searching, and shoved them in my pocket and never
let on--yes, and he's starting out to hunt for me. He'll hunt for new
tracks in the dust, and they'll as likely send him down the river as up.

"Just then I see a man coming down on a mule, and before I thought I
jumped into the bush. It was stupid! When he got abreast he stopped and
waited a little for me to come out; then he rode on again. But I didn't
feel gay any more. I says to myself I've botched my chances by that; I
surely have, if he meets up with Hal Clayton.

"Well, about three in the morning I fetched Elexandria and see this
stern-wheeler laying there, and was very glad, because I felt perfectly
safe, now, you know. It was just daybreak. I went aboard and got this
stateroom and put on these clothes and went up in the pilot-house--to
watch, though I didn't reckon there was any need of it. I set there and
played with my di'monds and waited and waited for the boat to start, but
she didn't. You see, they was mending her machinery, but I didn't know
anything about it, not being very much used to steamboats.

"Well, to cut the tale short, we never left there till plumb noon; and
long before that I was hid in this stateroom; for before breakfast I see
a man coming, away off, that had a gait like Hal Clayton's, and it made
me just sick. I says to myself, if he finds out I'm aboard this boat,
he's got me like a rat in a trap. All he's got to do is to have me
watched, and wait--wait till I slip ashore, thinking he is a thousand
miles away, then slip after me and dog me to a good place and make me
give up the di'monds, and then he'll--oh, I know what he'll do! Ain't it
awful--awful!