“And did you think I was in earnest when I said it?” Lester almost shouted. He began to understand what the duck-shooter was trying to get at, and his intense alarm took away all his strength and pretty near all his wits. He sat down on the Firefly’s deck and looked about him as if he were trying to make up his mind which way he could run first.
“Did I think you was in ’arnest?” repeated Barr. “Of course I did. If you wasn’t, you had no business to say what you did. I have done the work, and I want my money.”
“But what have you done?” said Enoch, again. “Where is Don Gordon now?”
“He’s on his way to Chiny,” was the astounding reply, “and he won’t come back to trouble none of you for three long years, at least.”
“Then you kidnapped him and put him aboard a vessel?” said Enoch.
“Well, as to that, I can’t say for certain,” answered Barr, reflectively. “He fought so uncommon hard that for a time it looked as though he was going to whop the pair of us, and Pete had to quiet him with a rap on the head. Pete afterward said he was sorry he teched him, for he was pluck to the back-bone, and he’d bet he was a good feller.”
“Then why didn’t you let him go?” demanded Enoch, who did the most of the talking. Jones and Lester were so nearly stunned by the startling piece of news Barr had brought them, that they hardly knew what they were doing.
“We couldn’t let him go, kase we’d gone too far,” replied the duck-shooter. “He’d have taken the law on us the minute he got loose. Now, Brigham, what are you going to do about it?”
“He won’t do anything about it,” said Enoch, who saw that Lester could not speak for himself. “He didn’t tell you that he wanted Don Gordon shanghaied and sent off to China, and if you have done any such mad work as that, which I don’t believe, you need not expect him to pay you for it.”
“That’s it,” cried Lester, who was quick to catch at the idea Enoch had thrown out. “You never did it. You took advantage of some thoughtless words we uttered yesterday, and have cooked up this story to extort money from me. But you have reckoned without your host. I haven’t got a thousand cents; so there, now.”
The duck-shooter’s eye had a dangerous look in it, but he answered very calmly: