“What robbers?” inquired Matt; while Jake, taken by surprise, bent his head lower over his cracked plate and trembled in every limb.
“I don’t know’s I can give you any better idee of it than by readin’ a little scrap in a paper that Swan give me early this morning,” answered Rube, pushing back his stool and pulling the paper in question from his pocket.
“Swan!” ejaculated Matt, his face betraying the utmost consternation. “Has he been round here?”
Rube replied very calmly that the guide had been around there, adding—
“Him an’ a whole passel of other guides an’ constables come to see me this morning at the hatchery afore sun-up. They told me all about it an’ give me this paper. They was a lookin’ for the robbers.”
“An’ don’t you know that they’re lookin’ for me too?” exclaimed Matt, reproachfully. “An you never come to wake me up so’t I could take to the bresh an’ hide? Spos’n I’d been ketched all along of your not bringin’ me word?”
“But you see I knowed you wasn’t in no danger,” replied the watchman. “They wouldn’t be likely to look for you in my house, an’ me holdin’ the position of watchman at the State hatchery, would they? Besides, they don’t care for you now. They’re after a bigger reward than has been offered for you. There’s six hundred dollars to be made by ’restin’ them robbers, an’ that’s what brung Swan an’ his crowd up here so early. They tracked the robbers through the woods as far as Haskinses’, Swan and the rest of the guides did, an’ there they found a steeple pulled outen the suller door an’—Hallo! What’s the matter of you, Jake?”
“There ain’t nothin’ the matter of me as I knows on,” said the boy, faintly.
“I thought you sorter acted like you was chokin’. Well, they routed up Haskinses’ folks, an’ when Miss Haskins come to go into the suller she said she had lost some ’taters, turnups, bacon, butter, and pickles,” continued Rube; and as he said this he ran his eyes over the table and saw before him every one of the articles he had enumerated. “Miss Haskins allowed that the robbers must a bust open the door to get grub to eat while they was layin’ around in the bresh. Mebbe they did an’ mebbe they didn’t; but that’s nothin’ to me. They couldn’t track the robbers no furder’n the suller; but they’re bound to come up with ’em, sooner or later. Townies ain’t as good at hidin’ in the woods as you be, Matt.”
The squatter grinned his appreciation of the complaint, and Rube proceeded to unfold his paper. When he found the dispatch of which he was in search, he read it in a low monotone, without any rising or falling inflection or the least regard for pauses. It ran as follows: