“Dog-gone such luck!” said Jonas.
“That’s just what I say,” replied Caleb. “Why did not the old man leave his money to you or mam like he had oughter do? Now nobody won’t get it.”
“Nobody except that miserable Nat,” sputtered Jonas. “I have a good notion to use the switch on you for letting him go.”
“Well, pap, you would not make anything by that. I was talking to him like a Dutch uncle, and the first thing I knew I was flat on my back, and he was just going out of sight. I did not hear anything of him from the time he struck the bushes. Do you hear him now?”
Jonas listened but all the sound he heard was the chirping of birds and the faint sough of the wind as the breeze swept through the bushes. Everything was as still as a graveyard; it seemed too still for the woods. Jonas listened for a moment and then gathered up his hat and put it on his head.
“Let’s go home,” whispered Caleb. “This ain’t no place for us.”
“That’s just what I was thinking of,” said Jonas, in the same cautious whisper. “Let’s take everything he has got in his lean-to and dig out. We shall have to hurry because it will be dark before we reach home.”
“I don’t believe in taking Peleg’s valise and gun back to him,” observed Caleb. “He brought them out here and he can take them back.”
“Well, that is so,” said Jonas, who was busy picking up the spade and pick-ax and such provisions as he could find. “But in the present opportunity we want Peleg and his pap to believe that we were here. We have got a fearful story to tell when we go back, and we want them to believe us.”
“That is so, too; but, pap, we won’t go back through the bushes, will we?”