“Well, you needn’t get huffy about it,” replied Matt, backing toward his log and pulling his pipe from his pocket. “I can tell you in a few words what I want you to do for me, an’ as for your friends, they can wait till their hurry’s over. Say,” added the squatter, sinking his voice to a confidential whisper, “you know I told you when I stole this here canvas canoe that I was comin’ to Injun Lake to go into the business of independent guidin’. You remember that, don’t you?”
“Well, what of it?” was the only response Tom deigned to make. “No matter what I remember. Go on with what you have to say to me.”
“Don’t get in a persp’ration,” continued Matt, with the most exasperating deliberation. “Yes; that’s one thing that made me take the canvas canoe—so’t I could go into the business of guidin’ on my own hook; but when I got here I found that the landlords wouldn’t have nuthin’ to do with me, an’ the guests wouldn’t, nuther. So I took to visitin’ all the camps I could hear of, an’ helpin’ myself to what I could find in ’em in the way of grub, we’pons an’ sich. I told you that was what I was goin’ to do. You remember it, don’t you?”
Tom made a gesture of impatience but said nothing.
“Yes; that’s what I done, an’ it wasn’t long before I kicked up the biggest kind of a row up there to Injun Lake,” said the squatter, pounding his knees with his clenched hands and shaking all over with suppressed merriment. “The women-folks dassent go into the woods for fear that they would run foul of me when they wasn’t lookin’ for it, an’ some of the guests told Hanson—he’s the new landlord, you know—that if he didn’t have me took up an’ put in jail they’d never come nigh him agin. Oh, I tell you I’ve done a heap since me an’ you had that little talk up there to Sherwin’s Pond, an’ I’m goin’ to do a heap more before the season’s over. I said I’d bust up guidin’ an’ the hotels along with it, an’ I’m goin’ to keep my word. I’ll l’arn them ’ristocrats that I’m jest as good as they ever dare be, even if I ain’t got no good clothes to wear.”
Tom Bigden was intensely disgusted. Matt talked to him as unreservedly as he might have talked to an accomplice. When he paused to light his pipe Tom managed to say—
“You hinted last summer that you intended to kidnap little children if you got a good chance. Have you tried it?”
“Not yet I ain’t, but there’s no tellin’ what I may do if they don’t quit crowdin’ on me,” replied Matt, with a grin. “That is one of the tricks I still hold in my hand. I must have money to buy grub an’ things, an’ since I ain’t allowed to earn it honest, as I would like to do, I must get it any way I can. An’ this brings me to what I want to say to you.”
“I am very glad to hear it,” answered Tom. “Now I hope you will hurry up. I am getting tired of listening to your senseless gabble. I am in no way interested in what you have done or what you intend to do. What do you want of me? That’s all I care to know.”
“Don’t get in a persp’ration,” said the squatter again. “Yes; I visited all the camps I could hear of, like I told you, an’ among other things I took outen them camps were two scatter-guns an’ a rifle. One of the scatter-guns I give up agin, an’ I got ten dollars for doin’ it, too.”