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Mebbe it's a Blackhanders' camp, I think; so I didn't yell any more. I cat-footed. And in a minute I was up close and seen 'em there in the dripping rain. "Rupert, Junior, was asleep, leaned setting up against a tree, with a messenger boy's cap on. And Margery was asleep on a pile of leaves, with her cheek on one hand and something over her.
But we went over to this Blackhanders' construction camp, just the same, to make sure, and none of the men was missing, the boss said, and no children had been seen; and anyway his men was ordinary decent wops and not Blackhanders and blamed if about fifty of 'em didn't turn out to help look!
Perhaps I should stay there oftener. "I turned on the Blackhanders. "'Did these brutes entice you away with candy? I demanded. 'Was they holding you here for ransom? "'Huh! I should think not! she says. 'They are a couple of 'fraid-cats. They were afraid as anything when we all got lost in these woods and wanted to keep on finding our way out.
It's as plain as the back of my hand. What chance would them two defenceless little children have with a gang of two hundred Blackhanders? "But that looked foolish, even to me. 'Shucks! I says. 'That don't stand to reason. But then I got another scare. 'How about water? I says. 'Any places round here they could fall into and get drownded?
And I sent something over to the Blackhanders that had turned out to help look, and something to Conductor Number Twenty-seven. And the next day I squared myself with Mrs. W.B. Hemingway and her husband, and Mrs. L.H. Cummins, when they come back, the aunt not having been sick but only eccentric again. "And them two poor homeless boys they kind of got me, I admit, after I'd questioned 'em awhile.
"'Blackhanders!" he says right off, kind of brightening a little bit. "I like to fainted for fair! He says they had lured the kids off with candy and popcorn, and would hold 'em in a tenement house for ten thousand dollars, to be left on a certain spot at twelve P.M. He seemed to know a lot about their ways.
"'They got the Honourable Simon T. Griffenbaugh's youngest that way, he says, 'only a month ago. Likely the same gang got these two. "'How do you know? I asks him. "'Well, he says, 'they's a gang of over two hundred of these I-talian Blackhanders working right now on a sewer job something about two miles up the road. That's how I know, he says. 'That's plain enough, ain't it?
"He'd looked glum again when I said two hundred Blackhanders didn't sound reasonable; but he cheers up at this and says: 'Oh, yes; lots of places they could drownd cricks and rivers and lakes and ponds and tanks any number of places they could fall into and never come up again. Say, he made that whole neighbourhood sound like Venice, Italy.
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