“I can tell that man’s name, for I know how he was shod the last time I saw him,” replied Joe. “It was Matt Coyle. He made a good many threats before he left the village, and he has begun to carry them out already. He has put up his shanty somewhere in the vicinity of this pond, and will make it his business to do some damage to every hunting and fishing party that comes here.”
“Well, what are we standing here for?” exclaimed Tom, who had expected before this time to hear somebody propose an immediate pursuit of the robber.
“We might as well stay here and take it easy, as to get wild and rush around through the woods for nothing,” replied Joe; and Tom was surprised to see how ready he was to give his boat up for lost. “In the first place, we couldn’t overtake the robber, and in the second, we couldn’t recover our property if we did. The day of reckoning will surely come, but we can’t do any thing to hasten it.”
The idea that the squatter would disturb any of the things in the other canoes had never entered into Tom’s mind. Matt seemed to remember, with as much gratitude as such a man was capable of, that Tom was one of the few who sympathized with him when he was ordered out of Mount Airy, and yet he had made little distinction between his property and that belonging to the sons of the trustees who ordered him away. There was no sham about his rage. He was angry because his elegant rod and German silver bass reel had disappeared, and because he knew that he would never dare have Matt Coyle arrested for the theft. If the latter should go before a magistrate and repeat the words that had passed between Tom and himself not more than half an hour ago, wouldn’t he be in a pretty scrape? He was in one already, for the squatter had a hold upon him, and subsequent events proved that Matt knew how to use it to his own advantage.
CHAPTER X.
FOREST COOKERY.
“HOW in the world did you manage to get separated from us so quickly?” asked Roy, addressing himself to Tom Bigden. “The last time I saw you, you were bringing up the rear all right, but when we lost the trail and stopped to hold a consultation, you were not to be seen.”
Tom had been expecting this, and he was ready with his answer. Pointing to his boots, which he had purposely stuck into a mud-hole, shortly after his companions left him, he said:
“I got mired in the swamp, and by the time I could crawl out and pour the water from my boots, you had left me so far behind that I could neither see nor hear any thing of you. If I had come directly back to the pond instead of wasting time in looking for you, I might have been able to stop Matt Coyle’s raid on our canoes.”
“I doubt it very much,” replied Joe Wayring. “No doubt Matt has been watching us all the morning and waiting for us to come ashore so that he could steal something, and I believe he would have made his ‘raid’ if we had all been here to oppose him. As it was, he had full swing, and there are none of us hurt.”
“That’s my idea,” said Arthur. “Judging by his countenance Matt is a bad man and a desperate one. Well, we have lost our rods and reels, which must be worth considerably more than a hundred dollars, but we have learned one thing, that we ought to profit by, and another that we can use to our advantage. To begin with, so long as Matt Coyle is allowed to stay about in this neck of the woods—”