“Why don’t you go to the hotels and hire out to them?” demanded Tom; and then he wondered if there were a landlord in the world who would trust a boat-load of passengers, ladies and children for instance, to the care of the walking whisky barrel he saw before him.
“Didn’t I try that very thing down there”—another backward jerk of the head—“an’ didn’t they tell me that they didn’t have no use fur sich lookin’ fellers as me an’ my boys was?” exclaimed Matt Coyle, fiercely. “They did fur a fact. But if I had a boat of my own I could go up to Injun Lake where they ain’t so perticular about the clothes a man wears, so long as he understands his business, an’ I’d make piles of money, too; ’cause why—I’d work fur less’n the reg’lar hotel guides. See?”
“Yes, I see; but how long would it be before the regular guides would run you out, the same as the Mount Airy people did? They would make the country so hot for you that you couldn’t stay there.”
“Suppos’n they tried that little game on?” answered Matt, laying down his rifle long enough to shake both his huge fists in the air. “Ain’t that somethin’ that two can play at? I’d break up the business of guidin’ in less’n two seasons.”
“How would you do it?”
“Yes, I would,” Matt went on. “If I only had a boat that was easy to slip around in an’ light to tote over the carries, I’d make the folks who come there fur fun so sick of them woods that they wouldn’t never come there no more; then what would become of them two big hotels when there wasn’t no custom to run ’em?”
“How would you go about it?” repeated Tom.
“Oh, there’s plenty of ways,” answered the squatter, shaking his head knowingly.
“Give us one of them.”
“Wal, s’pos’n I should see a big party, with childern among ’em, start out from one of them hotels as big as life, an’ I should foller along after ’em, easy like, an’ some day, when there wasn’t no men folks about, I should slip up, grab one of them childern an’ run him off to the mountains? An’ s’pos’n one of my boys should happen to be loafin’ around that hotel when the party come back without the child, an’ should hear that a reward of a hunderd, mebbe two hunderd dollars had been offered fur his safe return? Couldn’t my boy easy hunt me up, an’ couldn’t I tote that young un back to his pap an’ claim them dollars? Eh?”