"I suppose that if Mr. Warner were here," said the sergeant, "he would
reduce these statements to mathematics, ten per cent fact an' ninety per
cent fancy."
"Just about that," said Dick.
Red Blaze came to them presently, bristling with news.
"A farmer from a hollow further to the west," he said, "has just come in,
an' he says that a band of guerillas is ridin' through the hills.
'Bout twenty of them, he said, led by a big dark fellow, his face
covered with black beard. They've been liftin' hosses an' takin' other
things, but they're strangers in these parts. Tom Sykes, who was held
up by them an' robbed of his hoss, says that the rest of 'em called
their leader Skelly. Tom seemed to think that mebbe they came from
somewhere in the Kentucky mountains. They called themselves a scoutin'
party of the Southern army."
Dick started violently.
"Why, I know this man Skelly," he said. "He lives in the mountains
to the eastward of my home in Kentucky. He organized a band at the
beginning of the war, but over there he said he was fightin' for the
North."
"He'll be fightin' for his own hand," said the sergeant sternly.
"But he can't play double all the time. That sort of thing will bring
a man to the end of a rope, with clear air under his feet."
"I'm glad you've told me this," said Red Blaze. "Skelly might have
come ridin' in here, claimin' that he an' his men was Northern troops,
an' then when we wasn't suspectin' might have held up the whole town.
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