“Snadder,” Frank’s pleasant voice was once more addressed to him, “you have been badly treated. Jeek should never have left here until you came back. Don’t you realize that he knew we would get out in the meanwhile and that we’d capture you when you returned?”
This was well thought out on Frank’s part. His plan was to get Snadder to thinking Jeek had left things in such a way that the tramps would be captured and the boys take the tramps to jail for robbing the camp.
“He is satisfied, of course,” went on Frank, while the other boys listened intently, “to get the money he was asking and then to leave things so that we could capture you fellows who stole our stuff and take you back to jail with us.”
This had a decided effect on Snadder. Frank noted the change in the facial expression of the tramp. He waited quietly for the fellow’s reply. But the tramp fooled them:
“If things was so friendly between you and Jeek, why do you want to know when he is coming back?”
Frank’s expression did not undergo the slightest change.
“Well, Snadder, I am surprised at your lack of understanding,” he said. “You don’t think we are going to let him keep any money he got from us, do you? We know he didn’t go back to his own camp, because these other boys would have met him. So he must have gone somewhere else. And if he went somewhere else, we want to know where it is so we can get him. It wouldn’t be fair to take you two fellows to jail for robbing our camp and not take him.”
Snadder took this in quiet, and lay on the floor of the cabin thinking over things. For a while he made no attempt to continue the conversation, the boys again going outside the cabin to chat over matters.
Frank re-entered the shack after a while, and spoke:
“Snadder, you know we found lots of the things you stole from our place, and we’ve decided to put you two fellows in jail. So we’ll fix up your arms a bit stronger and we’ll start in now. It’s no use to try to get any more out of you. We’ll just have to wait for some other time to get Jeek.”