“I say I haven’t got fifty dollars to spend in any such way,” answered Tom. He wished from the bottom of his heart that he had pluck enough to defy the squatter, but he hadn’t. It cut him to the quick to be obliged to sit there and hear himself addressed so familiarly by such a fellow as Matt Coyle, but he could not see any way of escape. The man had it in his power to make serious trouble for him.
“Ain’t you got that much money about your good clothes?” asked Matt, incredulously.
“I haven’t fifty cents to my name.”
“You can’t make me b’lieve that. You wouldn’t come to Injun Lake without no money to pay your expenses. Don’t stand to reason, that don’t.”
“My cousin Ralph carries the purse and foots all our bills; but he hasn’t half that amount left. We are pretty near strapped and almost ready to go home.”
“Well, I won’t be hard on you,” said Matt. “I am the accommodatin’est feller you ever see. Go home, ask your pap for the money, an’ come back an’ hand it to me. That’s fair, ain’t it? Mount Airy is a hundred miles from Injun Lake. You oughter go an’ come back in ten days. I’ll give you that long. What do you say?”
“I’ll think about it,” replied Tom, whose sole object just then was to get out of hearing of Matt Coyle’s voice. As he spoke he placed one blade of his paddle against the bottom and shoved his canoe out into deep water.
“That won’t do, that won’t,” exclaimed Matt. “I want to know whether or not you are goin’ to bring me that money.”
“That depends upon whether I can get it or not.”
“’Cause you needn’t think you can get away from me by jest goin’ up to Mount Airy,” continued Matt. “There’s constables up there same’s there is at Injun Lake, an’ a word dropped at the hatchery will reach ’em mighty easy. If you want me to be friends with you, you won’t sleep sound till you bring me that fifty dollars.”