“Now, then, where is it? You see that we are in dead ’arnest, I reckon, don’t you? What have you done with it?”
“I tell you I don’t know any thing about it,” said Joe’s clear, ringing voice in reply. “I never saw it.”
For some reason or other these words seemed to set Jake Coyle beside himself. He yelled like a wild Indian, leaped from the ground, and made his heavy switch whistle as it cut the air in close proximity to the prisoner’s unprotected back. As soon as he could speak plainly he shouted—
“You have seed it too, an’ you do know somethin’ about it. Whoop! Put it onto him, pap, or else stand away from there an’ let me get at him. Don’t you mind how he slapped me in the face with that paddle of your’n? An’ now he’s gone an’ stole—”
“Don’t be in a hurry, Jakey,” interrupted Matt. “Your turn’ll come after I get through with him. I’ll let you at him directly. Look here,” he went on, once more addressing himself to Joe. “You won’t get no help from your friends, an’ you needn’t look for it. When we was comin’ through the woods, we seen ’em puttin’ for Injun Lake tight as they could go. Didn’t we, Jakey? Now if you will ax our parding for your meanness to us, an’ tell us where it is, we’ll let you off easy. What do you say?”
“I say I won’t do it,” answered Joe, in undaunted tones. “I shan’t ask your pardon, and you can’t make me. I haven’t done any thing to you.”
“You ain’t?” roared Matt, drawing back the switch as if he were about to let it fall on Joe’s back. “Don’t you call drivin’ honest folks outen Mount Airy ’cause they ain’t got no good clothes to w’ar, an’ keepin’ ’em from earnin’ a livin’ that they’ve got jest as good a right to as you rich ones have—don’t you call that doin’ somethin’?”
“And furthermore,” continued Joe, “I tell you, for the last time, that I don’t know any thing about that money. I never saw it.”
“Whoop!” shouted Jake, going off into another war-dance. “You have seed it, an’ you know all about it. You had them two grip-sacks into your baskets, you an’ your friends did, when you left Injun Lake to come up yer. Tom Bigden said so.”
“Whoop!” yelled Matt, in his turn. “Now you’ve done it, you fule! Didn’t that Bigden boy say plain enough that he didn’t want you to speak his name at all? See if that won’t put some gumption into your thick head; an’ that, an’ that! I’ll learn you to find six thousand dollars, an’ go an’ hide it from your pap, an’ then let fellers like Joe Wayring steal it from you, you ongrateful scamp.”