The “boys” understood him and went to work with a will. In less time than it takes to tell it, the lean-to was pulled down and thrown upon the fire, the bed-clothes and dishes were piled on top, the bacon was driven so deeply into the ground by the heels of heavy boots that a hungry hound could hardly have scented it—in short, every thing that Matt and his family had left behind in their hurried flight, was utterly destroyed. His scow was not forgotten. They would knock it out of all semblance to a boat when they went back to the creek.
Having started a roaring fire, they were obliged to stay and see it burn itself out, for they dared not leave it for fear that it might set the woods aflame. So they stood around and saw it blaze, grumbling the while over the ill luck that had attended their efforts to capture the cunning squatter, and it was fully three-quarters of an hour before Mr. Swan thought it safe to return to the boats. This delay gave Matt Coyle plenty of time in which to carry out a very neat piece of villainy, some of which I saw, and all of which I heard.
While the scenes I have just described were being enacted in the clearing, there were lively times in the little bay of which I have spoken. You know we were left in company with Matt’s scow, the boat in which I rode being drawn up on the bank on one side of him and Mr. Swan’s on the other; and no sooner had the hunting party disappeared in the bushes, than we began reviling him the best we knew how. The only reason we didn’t break him into kindling wood at once, was because we couldn’t. Our will was good enough.
“Get away from here,” said Wanderer. (That was the name of Mr. Swan’s boat. He had always lived and worked in the company of gentlemen, and he did not like to occupy close quarters with so disreputable a fellow as the scow.)
“Get away from here yourself,” was the report. “I was here first, an’ I’m going to stay.”
“I’ll bet you will,” said Bushboy. (That was the name of the boat Joe and his chums hired at Indian Lake.) “But you may be sure of one thing: You will stay a wreck.”
“That’s so,” said I. “Joe Wayring will never go away leaving him above the water. He’ll break him up so completely that his thief of a master won’t know him if he should happen along this way again.”
“He will never come this way again until he is on his road to jail,” said Wanderer. “Mr. Swan is after him, and he’s going to catch him, too.”
“Wal, Matt’ll go to jail knowin’ that he’s done a right smart of damage sence he’s been layin’ around loose in the woods, an’ if I am busted up, I shall have the same comfortin’ knowledge. Fly-rod has seed me afore. I captured his friend, the canvas canoe—”
“Where is he now?” I interrupted.