Arthur had nothing more to say, for it was no part of his plan to tell Tom just where he and his companions were going. The three boys loitered about for a minute or two, trying to think of something else to talk about, and then they said good-by and walked toward the Sportsman’s Home.
“I don’t see what there is betwixt you boys,” said Mr. Swan, as soon as Tom was out of hearing. “Those fellows seem friendly enough.”
“Yes; but we know that they are not to be trusted,” replied Joe. “Ralph and Loren are not so very bad, but Tom will do us a mean turn the first good chance he gets.”
“He didn’t tell the truth when he said that he had met Matt Coyle only by accident,” added the guide. “Some of the boys told me that one day last week he waited for Matt Coyle about two miles this side of the hatchery for more than an hour. That looked as though he had made an appointment.”
“I wish I had thought to speak to Tom about those guns,” observed Roy. “Do you know how he came to get hold of them, Mr. Swan? He must have told some sort of a story when he turned them over to the landlord of the Sportsman’s Home.”
“I guess you don’t believe he come by ’em in a legitimate way,” laughed Mr. Swan. “Well, mebbe he didn’t; I don’t know. He said he found ’em while he and his cousins were roaming about in the woods, hunting squirrels. The place to hunt for them is around cornfields, and not in thick woods.”
Having at last found their letters, Joe and his chums slung their camp-baskets over their shoulders, and started for the hotel, talking with the guide as they went, and listening attentively to his instructions regarding the route they would have to follow in order to reach the spring-hole. They engaged him to look out for their skiff while they were gone, after which they hunted up the storekeeper, from whom they purchased supplies enough to last them a week.
“Going up to No-Man’s Pond, be you?” said Morris, the guide who had patched up the hole that Matt Coyle’s scow knocked in the skiff on the night the “battle in the dark” took place. “Well, you’ll catch plenty of fish, but you will have a hard time getting there. You see, some lazy lout of a guide went to work and filled the carry full of trees and bushes, for fear that he might be called upon to show a guest over there. You will have to pick your way through the thickest woods you ever saw; so you want to go as light as possible.”
“We shall take nothing but my canvas canoe, these three camp-baskets, and our rods and guns,” replied Joe. “We have a good compass—”
“Well, whatever you do, don’t quarrel with it,” said Morris. “If you get turned around and see the sun go down in the north, when he ought to set in the west, don’t get frightened and run yourself to death, the way Billy Sawyer done two years ago. Billy had been guide for this country, man and boy, for more than twenty years. The last time I saw him, he was just starting out for the swamp about three miles the other side of No-Man’s Pond, intending to spend a month or so in trapping; but we don’t think he ever saw the swamp or the pond, either. First he lost his bearings, then he lost his head, then he went tearing through the woods, till he dropped and died of exhaustion within half a mile of the hotel.”