“Young man, you are a sharp one,” said the gentleman, admiringly. “What do you say, Swan?”
The guide appealed to could not say any thing, and neither could the others. Unfortunately they did not know that the squatter had made friends with the vagabonds living in the vicinity of the State hatchery. If they had known it, that was the place they would have started for without loss of time, but they wouldn’t have caught him if they had gone there.
“There’s a good deal of hard sense in Joe’s head,” said Mr. Swan, after a short pause. “Of course, Matt and his family will come together again somewhere, but you see the trouble is, we don’t know what point they are striking for.”
“Can’t you follow the trails and find out?”
“Take the plainest one of them trails, and I’ll bet every thing I’ve got that you can’t follow it a hundred yards,” said Mr. Swan. “It is going to take us a good long month to hunt them down, and we’ll be lucky if we do it in that time.”
“But we can’t wait so long,” protested one of the guests. “We must return to the city to-morrow. Our business demands our attention.”
The guides consulted in low tones, and so did their employers. Finally one of the latter wrote something on a card and handed it to Mr. Swan, saying:
“If we have done all we can, we might as well go back to the hotel; but before we start, we make you this offer: We will give a hundred dollars apiece to the man who will find our weapons, capture the thief and hold him so that we can come and testify against him. Or, we will give fifty dollars apiece for the guns without the thief, and the same amounts for the thief without the guns. Boys, you are included in that offer.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Arthur. “It would afford us great satisfaction if we could be the means of restoring your property to you.”
“Before we leave here we’ll fix things so that Matt won’t find much to comfort him if he should accidentally circle around this way after we are gone,” said Mr. Swan. “Pile on every thing, boys.”