“But what if that squatter should steal you again? I suppose you didn’t fare very well while you were in his hands.”
“Oh, I fared well enough,” replied the canoe, who seemed to have a happy faculty of accommodating himself to circumstances. “But I didn’t like the company I was obliged to keep, I tell you. Whenever Matt Coyle or his boys took me out on the water, I would have been only too glad to spill them out if I could have done it. I felt particularly savage on the night Jake used me in making his raid on that old guide’s potato-patch and smoke-house. When I saw the skiff coming after me, wouldn’t I have laughed if I had possessed the power? I knew that Jake was going to run me on to that snag, and when I was settling to the bottom, I told myself that Joe would never leave me there. I wasn’t hurt at all. I was easily mended with rosin and tallow and a piece of canvas, and am just as good as I ever was; although I confess that I look like a boy who has been in a fight and has to wear a patch over his eye.”
“How did the squatter make the journey from his shanty to the creek in which Joe found you?”
“Well, he carried me on his back from the pond to the river. It took him two days to do it, for I hindered him all I could by catching hold of every limb and bush that came within my reach. When we got to the river, Matt loaded me to the water’s edge with his household goods (you will know how I shrank from contact with them when I tell you that the blankets and quilts were so begrimed with smoke and dirt that Mars could not be hired to sleep on them), and then one of the boys got in and paddled me down the stream while the squatter and the rest of his family stumbled along the bank. Matt was afraid to make his camp anywhere near Indian Lake, because he knew that the guides would be very likely to burn or otherwise destroy every thing he had, as they did once before; so he turned up the creek, and hunted around until he found a place that suited him. It was in a secluded glen, about a quarter of a mile from the creek. He set his boys to work to build a lean-to, which would afford them some sort of shelter until they could provide a better covering for their heads, and started out with his rifle to get something to eat. During his rambles he found a smoke-house and potato-patch which he thought could be easily robbed, and as soon as he came home, he sent Jake out on that thieving expedition which resulted disastrously to him, for he lost his plunder and me into the bargain. I assure you I was glad to find myself among friends once more. Why, have you any idea what that villain meant to do? He was going to make a pirate of me. He intended, first, to offer himself as guide for the hotels, and if they wouldn’t take him, he intended to follow the guests and their guides along the water courses, and rob every camp that he found unprotected. That’s the kind of fellow Matt Coyle is. He ought to be abolished.”
“What became of the fishing-rods he stole at the time he ran off with you?”
“Well, they had worse treatment than I did, because they were not as useful as I was. They have been left out in the rain and abused in various ways, until they don’t look much as they did when the squatter first got his ugly hands upon them. I doubt very much if their owners would have recognized them if they could have seen them the last time I did.”
“Will our trip to Indian Lake last all summer?” I asked.
“Oh, no; only about two weeks. After that, we shall be packed off on a long journey, either East or West, I don’t know which, and neither did Joe the last time I heard him say any thing about it. You see, Uncle Joe Wayring owns large tracks of timber land in Maine and Michigan. He wants to see them both, for he has learned that thieves are at work in both places; but he hasn’t yet made up his mind which he wants to see the more. When he does he will tell Joe, and then we shall find out where we are going.”
There were a good many other questions that I wanted to ask my communicative friend, but before I could speak again a merry whistle sounded in the hall below, and somebody ascended the stairs three at a time. Then I knew that my master had finished his sail on the lake, and was coming up to his room to get ready for supper. He threw the door open with a bang, school-boy fashion, and walking straight up to me took me from my case and gave me a good looking over. He seemed as delighted as a youngster with his first pair of red top boots; but I was somewhat chagrined to learn that he did not have a very exalted opinion of my capabilities.
“That’s a very fine rod, no doubt; but I expect to break him into a dozen pieces before I have had him a month. A two pound trout will give him more than he wants to do.”