Old Shadow Shot — page 14: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

12 Setting his lips firmly after the last word, Zimri Paddock pushed our hero against the little tree beneath which they had halted, and proceeded at once to throw the cord around his body. Nightingale Nat fixed his eyes on the vil- lain, but did not put in a word of pleading. Mercy seemed a stranger to Captain Rough’s money-loving tool. ~ The cords were wielded without pity, and Nat found his body drawn painfully close to the tree. He almost wished that the hand of Paddock had not relaxed on his throat when he roughly drew him from the hollow tree as we have already related. “T’ll come back to you in the morning. By that time you may be inclined to open your mouth a little more freely, if you’re not eaten by wolves or bears!” the ruffian said, with a grin; and disappeared. Strong in his indignation, Nightingale Nat tried his bonds; but his trial caused them to cut into his flesh, and, with a groan, he desisted. “Wolves and bears, he said,” the boy ejaculated. “Just let them keep away till morning. Shadow-Shot will not give me up until he finds me again. I’ve gota big friend in that old hunter, and I’m going to stick to him, too.” The little captive remained so quiet for an hour after his muttered resolve, that a person standing a few feet away would not have been aware of his presence. It grew suddenly dark with the shadows whose greatest intensity precede the dawn. zs TPstho use!” Nat exclaimed all at once. “T can’t sleep, and talking doesn’t do me any good. Orackers and torpedoes! I’ve got to sing. If I did sing the train into danger, please good fortune, I may sing myself out of it. So here goes, hit or miss. When I want to sing I feel miserable if I don’t send the notes skipping up my throat.” Then out into the depths of that lonely Wisconsin forest floated the wild, musical notes of the doomed boy. He sang with the zest of a person infatu- ated by the spell of music, and a listener would never have dreamed that the singer was bound to a tree, and had been left to the mercy of the maddest tenants of that dark forest. Louder and clearer grew the strains as the song advanced, and the boy seemed to forget his situation in the melody of the bird-like trills. - Did any human beings hear? Yes. A man seated on a horse—a man who wore a broad-brimmed hat and carried a rifle across the saddle. “There’s the accursed boy!” he said, (OLD SHADOW-SHOT. gathering up the reins. ‘“ Why, in the name of Heaven! is he singing now? Is hecrazy? He'll sing a bullet to his heart if he déesn’t stop !” The second person who heard was a gizlish- looking individual who had been brought to a halt by the weird song. She, too, carried a rifle. “What is it?” she asked herself, with all the curiosity of her sex fully aroused. “What but some person singing out there in the woods. The voice comes no nearer. It is not the voice of a man; it isa boy’s. I wonder if he belongs to the train?” After listening to the song for a moment, the pretty speaker started in the direction of the singer. Almost at the same time, the man on horseback began to approach Nightingale Nat, but from a nearly opposite direction. As for the boy, he stopped suddenly and exclaimed : “The wolves are answering me. Well, I thought I could not sing, woods, and not get an answer from some kind of throat.”’ = eHe did not exhibit signs of fright. On the contrary, he smiled at his own words. CHAPTER VII. A RETURN TO PLUNDER. “YES, mebbe we'll squar accounts, cap’ n.” - Captain Rough looked into the stern countenance of the man who stood be- fore him, pistol in hand. Then he glanced at his horse, lying motionless on the leaves beside him. “Dead as a door-nail,” Shadow-Shot said, with a grin, as he noticed that glance. “ Now let’s come to business,” and the man stepped nearer. “In the first place, cap'n, whar 1s the leetle one?’ Rough started at the question. It told him that Nightingale Nat’s whereabouts were not known to the ranger. “Do not ask me,” hesaid. “AIT know is that you were with him when I saw him last —down at the place where we fought the robbers.” 3 “Fought!” sneered the gaunt ranger. “You don’t pretend to say that you fought the White Vultures, eh, cap’n?” Rough flushed. “Oh, it paints your face when a feller talks about that terrible resistance what you made to the robbers. Why, your cowardly men could have wiped out every robber, an’ avenged the massacre of Collyer an’ his even in these (E(0) men,” : r CoOnnicoooks