"Sure he would," assented Jean. They did not see me, behind the tent.
"Somethin's wrong," began L'Olonnois, portentously.
"What'd you guess?" queried Lafitte. "Looks to me like it was
somethin' between him an' the fair captive."
"That's just it--that's just what I said! Now, if Black Bart lets his
whiskers grow, an' Auntie Helena wears them rings, ain't it just like
in the book? Course it is! But here they go, don't eat nothin', don't
talk none to nobody."
"I'll tell you what!" began Lafitte.
"Uh-huh, what?" demanded L'Olonnois.
"A great wrong has been did our brave leader by yon heartless jade;
that's what!"
"You betcher life they has. He's on the square, an' look what he done
for us--look how he managed things all the way down to here. Anybody
else couldn't have got away with this. Anybody else'd never a' went
out there last night after John, just a Chink, thataway. An' her!"
Jimmy's disapproval of his auntie, as thus expressed, was extreme. I
was now about to step away, but feared detection, so unwillingly heard
on.
"But he can't see no one else but yon fickle jade!" commented Jean
Lafitte, "unworthy as she is of a bold chief's regard!"
"Nope. That's what's goin' to make all the trouble. I'll tell you
what!"
"What?"
"We'll have to fix it up, somehow."
"How'd you mean?"
"Why, reason it out with 'em both."
Jean apparently shook his head, or had some look of dubiousness, for
L'Olonnois went on.
"We gotta do it, somehow. If we don't, we'll about have to go back
home; an' who wants to go back home from a good old desert island like
this here. So now----"
"Uh, huh?"
"Why, I'll tell you, now. You see, I got some pull with her--the fair
captive. She used to lick me, but she don't dast to try it on here on
a desert island: so I got some pull. An' like enough you c'd talk it
over with Black Bart."
"Nuh--uh! I don't like to."
"Why?"
"Well, I don't. He's all right."
"Yes, but we got to get 'em together!"
"Shore. But, my idea, he's hard to get together if he gets a notion
he ain't had a square deal nohow, someways."
"Well, he ain't. So that makes my part the hardest. But you just go to
him, and tell him not to hurry, because you are informed the fair
captive is goin' to relent, pretty soon, if we just don't get in too
big a hurry and run away from a place like this--where the duck
shootin' is immense!"
"But kin you work her, Jimmy?"
"Well, I dunno. She's pretty set, if she thinks she ain't had a square
deal, too."
"Well now," argued Lafitte, "if that's the way they both feel, either
they're both wrong an' ought to shake hands, or else one of 'em's
wrong, and they either ought to get together an' find out which it
was, or else they ought to leave it to some one else to say which one
was wrong. Ain't that so?"