Matt discovers the lost money at last.
CHAPTER XVI.
AT THE BOTTOM OF THE RIVER.
Matt Coyle would have been utterly confounded if he had known, or even suspected, how completely his family had been broken up by the events of the last few days. He labored under the delusion that Jake and Sam had run away simply to escape the punishment they so richly deserved; but they had only made a bad matter worse, Matt told himself, for they would be obliged to return sooner or later, and then they might rest assured the promised whipping would be administered with added severity. But Jake and Sam had gone away with the intention of staying away. They were afraid of their brute of a father, and the cold chills crept all over them whenever they thought of the New London jail. They could not see the justice of being beaten or locked up for something they did not do, and the only recourse they had was to go to those whom they had been taught to regard as their enemies—the guides and the officers of the law. With the exception of his wife, the squatter’s family had all turned against him. Her he found dozing over a fire on the bank of a cove. Without saying a word Matt walked up and showed her the valises.
“What’s them, an’ where’s the boys?” she drowsily asked.
“Now listen at the fule!” shouted Matt. “Ain’t you got a pair of eyes? Them’s the six thousand dollars that’s been a-botherin’ of us so long, an’ the boys have run off to get outen the lickin’ I promised ’em. But they’ll come back when they get good an’ hungry, an’ then I’ll have my satisfaction on ’em. You’ve got a little bacon an’ a few taters left, I reckon, ain’t you? Well, dish ’em up, an’ I’ll tell you where I’ve been an’ what a-doin’ since I seen you last.”
The dinner his wife was able to place before him did not by any means satisfy the cravings of Matt’s hunger, and when it had been disposed of there was not a morsel of any thing eatable left in the camp; and, worse than that, Jake was missing, and there was nobody to steal another supply. Matt talked as he ate, and by the time he was ready for his pipe he had given his wife a pretty full history of his movements during the last two days.
“This ain’t a safe country no longer after me tyin’ Joe Wayring fast to a tree an’ promisin’ to lick him if he didn’t tell me where the money was,” said the squatter in conclusion. “He never had the money, Joe didn’t; Sam knew where it was all the while an’ never told me. But Joe won’t be nonetheless mad at me, an’ I reckon I’d best be lookin’ for new quarters for a while. I’m goin’ to take the money an’ skip out. I do wish in my soul I had a boat. I’d run a’most any risk to get one.”
“Where would you go?”
“I’ll tell you,” replied Matt confidentially. “I’ve been studyin’ it over as I come along, an’ have made up my decision that I’d be safer if I was onto their trail ’stead of havin’ them on mine; so I’ll put as straight for Sherwin’s Pond as I can go an’ stay there till the thing has kinder blowed over.”