"Gid's a shifty old cuss, and I ain't taking any chances," he explained
aloud to Dud.
Holt was beginning to take the outrage philosophically. He sat close to
a smudge and smoked his pipe.
"I wouldn't either if I were you. Sometime when you ain't watching, I'm
liable to grab that gun and shoot a hole in the place where your brains
would be if you had any," countered the old man.
He slept peacefully while they took turns watching him. Just now there
would be no chance to escape, but in a few days they would become
careless. The habit of feeling that they had him securely would grow
upon them. Then, reasoned Holt, his opportunity would come. One of the
guards would take a chance. Perhaps he might even fall asleep on duty.
It was not reasonable to suppose that in the next week or two he would
not catch them napping once for a short ten seconds.
There was, of course, just the possibility that they intended to murder
him, but Holt could not associate Selfridge with anything so lawless.
The man was too soft of fiber to carry through such a programme, and as
yet there was need of nothing so drastic. No, this little kidnapping
expedition would not run to murder. He would be set free in a few weeks,
and if he told the true story of where he had been his foes would spread
the report that he was insane in his hatred of Macdonald and imagined
all sorts of persecutions.
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