The newcomer was breathing heavily. Jerry darted a glance at him. He saw a stringy youth with a pimpled face, garbed in a jersey and dingy white flannels, whose voice now took on a tone of injury.
“Yeah, we found it floatin’ down by the outlet. They must have landed in some hurry; Talk about nerve! I was choppin’ some wood up by our place above the Springs. These two come burstin’ out of the woods, runnin’ like blazes, and got away with the canoe before I even had time to yell. I run along shore about half a mile, but they had started across, and I couldn’t do a thing. Pretty soon along comes a man on a horse, gallopin’ along like mad. He asks me if I’ve seen this pair—he’s a deputy sheriff, he says. You could have knocked me over with a feather when he tells me that one of the guys who stole the canoe was this convict that’s been missin’ from the Pen at Elmville!”
“Ye don’t say! Wal, did he catch ’em?”
“No, not yet. They got ashore by the outlet, like I told you. They’re still loose around here somewheres; this sheriff feller says he hunted ’em with dogs, and got one, but these two got clean away.”
Jerry was frozen in his place, one hand still gripping a can of corned beef. It couldn’t be true! Hunted with dogs! And one of them captured!
“They’ll get ’em,” said the old storekeeper with grim satisfaction; “ye’ll see, Rufe, them fellers won’t get far. That there airyoplane they got flyin’ around is like to spot ’em if they try to break across country.”
“I hope they do get caught,” said the youth vengefully. “Stealin’ my canoe! Jimmy from the newspaper office was just tellin’ me this convict feller had got some kids from a camp up the line to help him get away last night. Must have been one of ’em I saw with this man——”
“What did the boy look like?” Jerry blurted out, and instantly wished he had bitten out his tongue rather than speak those words. His concern for his brother had made him forget how perilous was his own position.
The youth in flannels turned upon him slowly. “Well, if it’s any of your affair, Mr. Butt-In, he was——” The speaker gasped, and surveyed Jerry from head to toe. “Why—why—from what I saw of him, he looked just like you!”
The old man cackled with laughter. “Guess that’ll fix ’im, eh, Rufe? Pretty fast answer, that!”