"
The desperate party beneath the stairs at last broke open the back door
there and rushed forth, only to receive handfuls of red pepper dust
thrown by Miles Tindel, as he cried,
"Tackle 'em, Cap'n Van!"
They screamed with anguish, and rolled in the wet grass, and yet, with
fears stronger than pain, sought the road in blindness, and some way to
leave the town.
Young Owen O'Day, or Daw, crept down the tree, and, seeing Van Dorn in
Sorden's arms at the wagon, contemptuously said, as he mounted his mule
and vanished:
"I reckon he'll never discipline me no mo'."
Derrick Molleston, regretting the loss of his loping horse, bore out to
the wagon an object he had found striving to escape from the veranda at
the kitchen side, though with a gag in his mouth, and a skewer between
his elbows and his back.
"See me, see me!" the negro kidnapper spoke, hoarsely. "He's mine an'
Devil Jim Clark's. I tuk him."
"Why, it's Buck Ransom," Sorden said.
"An' I'm gwyn to sell him, too," the negro muttered, seizing the reins.
"You see me now! Maybe he cheated us. Any way, he's tuk."
The old wagon started at a run through the driving rain, the black
victim lying helpless on his back, and Van Dorn bleeding in Sorden's
arms, who continued to moan,
"I loved him as I never loved A male!"
Van Dorn made several efforts to talk, and often coughed painfully, and
finally, as they reached a lane gate, he articulated:'
"The Chancellor's?"
"Yes, dis is it," Derrick Molleston said.
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