“Must we leave the money behind after all the risk we ran to get it?”
“The money can stay where it is till the rust eats it up for all I care,” replied Tony, who was very much alarmed. “I wouldn’t stay here a minute longer after what you have done for all the money there is in America.”
“But there are six thousand dollars in those grip-sacks,” protested Jim, “and that amount of cash don’t grow on every bush.”
“I know it; but there’s no help for it that I can see. You have knocked us out of a fortune by being so quick with your revolver.”
Here the speaker broke out into a volley of the heaviest kind of oaths, and Jake Coyle sat composedly in the canvas canoe listening to him. The boy’s courage came back to him the instant he found himself in the boat with the double paddle in his hand, and instead of making haste to return to the other shore, as I thought he would, he kept still and waited to see what his late passengers were going to do. Although he was not more than twenty yards from them they could not see him, for, as I have said, the night was pitch dark.
“I knowed by the way them fellers went snoopin’ around that suller, an’ by the funny story they tried to cram down my throat, that they wasn’t sportsmen like they pertended to be,” soliloquized Jake, giving himself an approving slap on the knee. “An’ I knowed the minute I seed that money that it wasn’t their’n, an’ that’s why I upsot ’em into the lake. Whoop-pee! I’ve got a silver mind up there by that snag, an’ to-morrer night I’ll slip up an’ work it.”
Hardly able to control himself, so great was his delight over the success of his hastily conceived plans, Jake sat and listened while the robbers floundered through the water toward the shore; and when a crashing in the bushes told him that they had taken to the woods, he headed me for the place where he had left the stolen provisions. Six thousand dollars! Jake could hardly believe it. It was a princely fortune in his estimation, and it was all his own; for no one except himself and the robbers knew where it was, and the latter would not dare come after it, believing, as they did, that their chance shot had proved fatal to Jake. It would be an easy matter for the boy to bring the two grip-sacks to the surface by diving for them, but what should he do with the money after he got hold of it? Unless he went to some place where he was not known, it would be of no more use to him than those fine guns were to his father. There was but one store within a radius of fifty miles at which he could spend any of it, and Jake knew it would not be safe to go there. The store was located at Indian Lake, and that was the headquarters of the guides who were so hostile to his father’s family.
“It’s a p’int that will need a heap of studyin’ to straighten it out,” thought Jake, putting a little more energy into his strokes with the double paddle. “But I’m rich, an’ I needn’t stop with pap no longer’n I’ve a mind to. That’s a comfortin’ idee. Wouldn’t him an’ Sam be hoppin’ if they knowed what had happened to-night? I don’t reckon I’d best have any thing more to say to Rube about them guns. I don’t care for fifty dollars long’s I got six thousand waitin’ for me.”
Jake found the bags where he had left them, and also the five dollars which the robbers had paid him for ferrying them across the lake. He loaded the bags into the canoe, after putting the money into his pocket, and set out for home, which he reached without any further adventure. He took a good deal of pains to avoid the watchman at the hatchery, although there was really no need of it. Rube knew well enough that the food Matt’s wife served up to him three times a day had never been paid for. The first words he uttered when he presented himself at the breakfast table the next morning proved as much.
“Beats the world how you folks keep yourselves in grub so easy,” said he, as he drew one of the stools up to the well-filled board. “I never see you do no work, an’ yet you never go hungry. Well, I don’t know’s it’s any of my business; but I’d like mighty well to make it my business to ’rest them two robbers that’s prowlin’ about in these woods.”