Where could she have run?"
"There's no way for her to slip us but by water or through the Cypress
Swamp, Colonel. She ain't safe this side of Cantwell's bridge. Word has
gone out, and every road is watched."
"But Van Dorn is beaten back; he hasn't made a single capture; the
niggers drove him out of Dover with firearms, and he is wounded
somewhere."
The tall kidnapper turned pale, and then consigned Van Dorn's shade to
eternal torment.
"Don't swear before me, sir!" McLane, also irritated, exclaimed. "It's
not conservative, and I won't permit it. How do I know Meshach Milburn
is dead? who did it?"
"Black Dave fired the barker, and saw him settled."
"Send him here!"
The negro came in, red-eyed, and hoarse with diseased lungs, and stood,
the wreck of a once gigantic and regular man.
"Gi' me a drink," he muttered; "I'm mos' dead wi' misery an cold."
"Tell this man what you did," Joe Johnson spoke; "you waited till you
saw the hat at the window, and fired, and fetched hat an' man to the
ground?"
Swallowing a thimbleful of McLane's brandy, the negro grunted "Blood!"
and looked tremblingly at his hands.
"What shape of hat was it?" McLane asked, shaking the negro savagely;
"was it like this?" shaping his own soft slouched hat to a point.
Black Dave looked, and shook his head.
"Not like that? Damnation!"
"No swearing, Colonel, before us conservatives," ventured Joe Johnson;
"what was the hat like, Dave? You're drunk.
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