He was too shaken up to
think clearly, but he wondered, as the rattling train moved slowly
along, how long he could go without food, how he would get back from
Buffalo, and whether this dreadful companion of his would take his
stand, like an animal at bay, whenever the train stopped.
After a little time, when he was able to get a better grip on himself
and realize fully his terrible plight, he began to think how, after all,
the scout, with all his resource and fine courage, his tracking and his
trailing and his good turns, is pretty helpless in a real dilemma. Here
was an adventure, and rather too much of a one, and neither he nor any
other scout could extricate him from his predicament. In books they
could have done it with much brave talk, but in real life they could do
nothing. He was tired and frightened and helpless; the shock of the
pressure of those brutal fingers about his neck still distressed him,
and his head ached from it all.
What wonder if in face of this tragical reality, the scouts with all
their much advertised resource and prowess should lose prestige a little
in his thoughts? Yet it might have been worth while for him to pause and
reflect that though the scout arm is neither brutal nor menacing, it
still has an exceedingly long reach and that it can pin you just as
surely as the cruel fingers which had fixed themselves on his own
throat.
But he was too terrified and exhausted to think very clearly about
anything.
CHAPTER XI
TRACKS AND TRAILING
When the engineer blew the whistle which the convict had heard with such
satisfaction and Pee-wee with such dread, it was by way of warning two
dark figures which were about to cross the tracks.
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