Not being posted in law, I did not quite understand the situation, but I didn’t like to ask any more questions. It was enough for me to know that Matt Coyle seemed to have the best of the game. Indeed, he always seemed to have it.
CHAPTER XIX.
CONCLUSION.
THE boats made an early start the next morning, and reached the pond at nine o’clock. Half an hour later they had crossed it, and were moving up the creek where I performed my first exploit, and Joe Wayring so narrowly escaped capture by Matt Coyle and his boys. It annoyed me to think that the squatter and his family had enjoyed so good a supper, and that I had unwittingly provided it for them. It would not have soothed my feelings much if some one had told me that, although that was the first meal I had caught for them, it would not be the last.
“Now, then,” said Mr. Swan, after he and his party had listened to Joe’s description of the exciting incidents that happened in the creek on the evening of the previous day, “we will divide ourselves into two fleets and take opposite sides of the stream. As we go up, let every one of us keep a bright lookout for a sign. Those robbers could not have got into their scow or landed from it without leaving a trail, and that is what we want to find.”
In obedience to these instructions four of the boats kept to one side of the creek, the remaining four pulled over to the other bank, and the hunt began in earnest. Every inch of the shore on both sides was closely scrutinized, but up to three o’clock in the afternoon nothing suspicious had been discovered. Mr. Swan began to believe that they had passed the trail long ago without seeing it, and said as much to his employer, adding—
“That villain is sharper than two or three men have any business to be. He and his family, the old woman included, can go through the woods without leaving trail enough for a hound to follow. They never forget to be as careful as they know how, for they have so long lived in constant fear of arrest that—”
The guide suddenly paused, and looked earnestly at Joe and his companions, whose actions seemed to indicate that they had found something that would bear looking into. Their boat was loitering along two or three rods behind the others, Roy and Arthur doing the rowing, while Joe was stretched out flat on the knapsacks, his chin resting on his arms which were supported by the gunwale, and his eyes fastened upon the bank. All at once he started up and said, in a low tone:
“Cease rowing. Look at that.”
“Look at what?” demanded Roy, after he and Arthur had run their eyes up and down the bank without seeing any thing that was calculated to excite astonishment. “At those bushes growing in the water? That’s nothing, for we’ve seen bushes growing in the water ever since we came into the creek.”
“I am aware of it; but if you will look closely at these particular bushes, you will see that the bark is scraped off some of them, and that they all lean away from the creek as if some heavy body had been dragged over them,” answered Joe. “Back port and give way starboard. Let’s turn in here; and if we don’t find something or other on the opposite side, I shall wonder.”