“An’ I’m goin’ to give that Joe Wayring the best kind of a poundin’ to pay him for hittin’ me in the face with your paddle,” continued Jake.
“You can do that, too, an’ I won’t never say a word agin it. All them fellers need bringin’ down, an’ I’d like the best way to see you boys do it. Now there’s that skiff of their’n,” added Matt, reflectively. “She’s better’n the scow, ’cause she’s got oars instead of paddles, an’ can get around faster.”
“An’ she’s big enough to carry us an’ our plunder, an’ she’s got a tent, so’t we wouldn’t have to go ashore to camp when we wanted to stop for the night,” said Sam. “But we’d have to steer clear of the guides, ’cause they all know her,”
“We’ve got to steer clear of them anyhow, ain’t we?” demanded Matt. “I reckon we’d best take her for a house-boat, an’ use the canvas canoe to go a prospectin’ for camps.”
Matt and his boys continued to talk in this way until darkness came to conceal their movements, and then they stepped into the scow and paddled toward the pond, leaving me tied fast to a tree on the bank. I knew they were going on a fool’s errand. They seemed to forget that Joe and his friends never went into the woods without taking a body-guard and sentinel with them; and, knowing how vigilant Arthur Hastings’ little spaniel was in looking out for the safety of the camp, I did not think it would be possible for the squatter, cunning as he was, to steal a march upon the boys he intended to rob. If Jim aroused the camp there would be the liveliest kind of a fight, and I was as certain as I wanted to be that the attacking party would come off second best.
The squatter was gone so long that I began to grow impatient; but presently I heard loud and excited voices coming from the direction of the pond, mingled with cries of distress, the clashing of sticks, and other sounds to indicate that there was a battle going on out there. Although it seemed to be desperately contested, it did not last long, for in less than ten minutes afterwards I saw the scow coming into the creek. The very first words I heard convinced me that, although Matt and his boys had failed to surprise and rob Joe’s camp, they had inflicted considerable damage upon him and his companions. To my great satisfaction I also learned that my confidence in Jim, the spaniel, had not been misplaced.
“If I ever get the chance I’ll fill that little black fice of their’n so full of bullet holes that he won’t never be of no more use as a watchdog I bet you,” said Sam, in savage tones. “We could have done jest what we liked with that there camp, an’ every thing an’ every body what’s into it, if it hadn’t been for his yelpin’ an’ goin’ on.”
“Now, listen at you!” exclaimed his father, impatiently. “I’m right glad the dog was there an’ set up that yelpin’, ’cause if we’d went ashore, like we meant to do, we’d a had that man Swan onto us.”
“Well, what of it?” retorted Sam. “Ain’t you a bigger man than he is?”
“That ain’t nuther here nor there,” answered Matt, who knew that he could not have held his own in an encounter with the stalwart guide. “Fightin’ ain’t what we’re after. We want to do all the damage we can without bein’ ketched at it.”