"
"But--suppose we're caught in here?"
"No chance. It's Sunday morning, no one will be here to work to-day, and
we'll be let alone."
With a little effort we twisted the bales apart and made comfortable
beds from the hay.
It seemed I had slept but a moment when I was seized by a nightmare. I
dreamed some monstrous form was bending over me, cursing, breathing
flames out of its mouth, and boring a hot, sharpened implement into the
centre of my forehead. I woke, to find, that, in part, my dream was
true.
There straddled over me an excited man, swearing profusely to keep his
courage up. He was pressing the cold muzzle-end of a "forty-four-seventy"
into my forehead.
"Come on! Get up, you ---- ---- ----! Come on out of here, or I'll blow
your ---- ---- ---- brains out, do you hear?"
Then I caught myself saying, as if from far away, perfectly calm and
composed, and in English that was almost academic--"my dear man, put up
your gun and I will go with you quietly. I am only a tramp and not a
desperado."
This both puzzled and at the same time reassured my captor ... and made
him swear all the louder,--this time, with a note of brave certainty in
his tone.
His gun poked me in the back to expedite my exit. I stepped out at the
open door into streaming daylight that at first dazzled my eyes. I saw
waiting on the track outside a posse of about fifteen citizens.
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