Little dreaming how shrewd a guess he had made, Matt filled his pipe and sat down for another smoke. While he was trying to find some satisfactory answers to the questions he had propounded to himself, he was aroused by a slight splashing in the water, and looked up to see a light canoe close upon him. It had rounded the point unseen, and was now so near that any attempt at flight or concealment would have been useless. So Matt put on a bold face. He arose to his feet with great deliberation, picked up his rifle, and rested it in the hollow of his arm.
“No one man in the Injun Lake country can ’rest me,” I heard him say, in determined tones, “an’ if that feller knows when he’s well off he won’t try it. Well, I do think in my soul! If that ain’t the boy that told me to steal Joe Wayring’s boat, I’m a sinner. He’s the very chap I want to see, for I’ve got use for him. Hello, there!” he added, aloud. “Powerful glad to see you agin, so onexpected like. Come ashore.”
Tom Bigden (for it was he) paused when he heard himself addressed so familiarly, and sat in his canoe with his double paddle suspended in the air. He gave a quick glance at the tattered, unkempt figure on the beach, and with an exclamation of disgust went on his way again.
“Say,” shouted Matt, in peremptory tones. “Hold on a minute. I want to talk to you.”
“Well, I don’t want to talk to you,” was Tom’s reply. “Mind your own business and let your betters alone.”
If Tom had tried for a week he could not have said any thing that was better calculated to make Matt Coyle angry. The latter never acknowledged that there was any body in the world better than himself. Lazy, shiftless vagabond and thief that he was, he considered himself the equal of any industrious, saving and honest guide in the country.
“Who’s my betters?” Matt almost yelled. “Not you, I’d have you know. I can have you ’rested before this time to-morrer, if I feel like it, an’ I will, too, if you throw on any more of your ’ristocratic airs with me. Mind that, while you’re talkin’ about bein’ ‘my betters.’”
“Why, you—you villain,” exclaimed Tom, who could not find words strong enough to express his surprise and indignation. “How dare you talk to me in that way?”
“No more villain than yourself,” retorted Matt, hotly, “an’ I dare talk to you in any way I please. You don’t like it ’cause a man who ain’t got no good clothes to wear has the upper hand of you an’ can send you to jail any day he feels in the humor for it, do you? Well, that’s the way the thing stands, an’ if you want to keep friends with me, you had better do as I tell you.”
Tom Bigden was utterly confounded. Never in his life before had he been so shamefully insulted. Do as that blear-eyed ragamuffin told him! He would cut off his right hand first. Almost ready to boil over with rage, Tom dipped his paddle into the water and set his canoe in motion again.