“If he makes a charge he’ll run over me and never know there was any thing in his path. I’ll give him all the room he wants,” soliloquized Joe; and, suiting the action to the word, he got upon his feet and backed softly into the bushes.
After standing a second or two in a listening attitude, the man kicked the coals together with his heavy boot, and threw upon them a dry hemlock branch, which instantly blazed up, revealing the guide’s honest face. Joe was greatly relieved. “How you frightened me,” said he, as he came down the path. “You looked as big as a tree, and I thought you were Matt Coyle, sure.”
“You can see for yourself that he or somebody else has been here within a few hours,” replied Mr. Swan, tossing another branch upon the coals.
“Do the signs tell you any thing?”
“Haven’t seen any sign yet except this smouldering fire. Call up the rest of the fellows and we will go into camp back there at the creek. In the morning we’ll take a look around and see what we can see.”
Guided by an occasional word from Joe the other two presently came up. By this time the fire was burning brightly, and by the aid of the light it gave they were enabled to examine the ground about it. They found the charred remains of the squatter’s lean-to, but could not discover the first thing to give them a clew to the identity of the person or persons who built the fire. The guide was almost sure it was not Matt Coyle, for Matt invariably left some sort of rubbish behind him. Whoever he was, he had not been gone more than half an hour, for the coals had hardly ceased blazing when Mr. Swan found them. They lingered long enough to see the fire burn itself out and then started for the creek, where a great surprise awaited them.
CHAPTER XV.
ON THE RIGHT TRACK AT LAST.
A more astonished trio than Matt Coyle and his boys were when they heard Arthur Hastings’s voice, and looked up to find the muzzle of his double-barrel pointed straight at their heads, had never been seen on the shores of No-Man’s Pond. They really believed that they had seen Arthur and Roy in the woods going toward Indian Lake, and when they made a prisoner of Joe Wayring they thought they held him at their mercy. But, although Matt was surprised at the interruption, he was not to be easily beaten. He uttered a faint cry, which had more than once sent his whole family scurrying into the bushes, and in less time than it takes to write it he and his boys were out of sight. They wormed their way through the bushes with astonishing celerity, and by the time Roy and Arthur reached the shore and released the captive from his bonds Matt and his allies were lying prone behind a log a short distance away, with their rifles pointed over it, waiting to be attacked.
“Jakey, you an’ Sam was certainly mistaken when you said that the fellers we seen goin’ through the woods was the same ones that always went with Joe Wayring,” whispered Matt. “If it was them, how did they happen to come up in that there canvas canoe the way they did? My luck has turned agin me onct more, ain’t it?”
“That Bigden boy played a trick on you,” said Jake. He passed his hand over his battered face and could hardly repress a howl when he saw that it was covered with blood.