"It was well done."
"So well done that it held me, for a moment," Dave went on. "The
noose choked me, for a brief space, so that I didn't have much
presence of mind. Before I recovered myself, the fellow had passed
the rope several times around my body and arms, and had taken
the extra loops on my arms. By that time I was so helpless that
I couldn't stir to free myself."
"And you didn't see the fellow?" asked Dick.
"Not a glimpse of him. He worked from behind, and did his trick
like lightning."
"But there are no steaks, nor any plate, on the ground in the
thicket now," Reade reported, after looking.
"No," Darry grunted. "The fellow who tried me up like this passed
over my eyes a dirty cloth that perhaps he would call a handkerchief.
Then I heard him over by the thicket. Next he was back here
and had whisked that cloth away from my eyes. That was the last
I heard of him."
"Why didn't you set up a roar as soon as he attacked you?" demanded
Tom Reade.
"The noose bound my throat so tightly, I couldn't," Darry explained.
"I was seeing stars, and I was dizzy. After he had taken a few
hitches of the rope around me he eased up on the noose a bit."
"Did you 'holler' then?" questioned Dick.
"No," Dave Darrin admitted honestly.
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