“I should think there were rascals enough here already,” said Loren, after he had listened to all the particulars.
“They keep coming in all the while,” replied Ralph, “and the landlords don’t like it very well. It’s hurting their business. The sportsmen, especially those who have women and children with them, are leaving as fast as they can pack up. We’ll be off to-morrow, and I hope we shall never come here for another outing. Tom, are you sure you can take us straight to the creek that leads from the pond to the Indian river? You know we told you that, in the absence of a guide, we should depend on you to show us the way home.”
“Don’t be uneasy,” was Tom’s confident answer. “I have a good many landmarks to go by, and I’ll not take you an inch out of a direct line.”
Of course there was but one thing talked about around that camp fire between supper time and the hour for retiring, and that was the attempt on the part of Matt Coyle to make a receiver of stolen property out of Tom Bigden. The longer they dwelt upon it the darker Tom’s prospects seemed to become. The fear of what the squatter could do, if he made up his mind to be ugly, effectually banished sleep from their eyes for the greater part of the night; and the consequence was that when they arose from their beds of browse the next morning they were too cross and snappish to be civil to one another. During the time that was consumed in cooking and eating breakfast, packing the canoes, and getting under way, they did not speak half a dozen words aloud; but they all kept up a good deal of thinking, and no doubt it was while Tom was in a fit of abstraction that he lost his way. At any rate, he left the lake at least two miles below the point at which he ought to have left it. He turned into the creek up which Matt Coyle and his boys fled on the morning following their encounter with Joe Wayring and his chums, and Ralph and Loren blindly followed his lead. Not until they made a landing, about two o’clock in the afternoon, to eat their lunch, did Tom begin to suspect that he was a little out of his reckoning. If they had come there a few hours sooner, they would have seen Mr. Swan and his party; for, as luck would have it, they had landed within a short distance of Matt Coyle’s old camp.
“I am obliged to confess that I am any thing but a trustworthy guide for this neck of the woods,” said Tom, after he had looked in vain for some of the landmarks of which he had spoken the day before. “I don’t think I ever saw this place until this moment.”
“Well, I am sure I have,” said Loren. “On our way down we camped within sight of that leaning tree over there. Didn’t we, Ralph?”
“I think so. I am quite sure I shot at an eagle on that same leaning tree. You fellows fix the lunch, and I will very soon find out whether I am right or wrong,” said Ralph, getting upon his feet and shoving a cartridge into each barrel of his gun. “If this is the place I think it is, I shall find a little clearing back here about a hundred yards, grown up to briers. Don’t you remember we picked a few berries there on the way down?”
“I haven’t forgotten about the berries, but I don’t think you will find that or any other clearing in these thick woods,” answered Tom. “But go ahead and look, and we will have the lunch ready by the time you get back.”
Ralph shouldered his gun and disappeared among the evergreens. He was gone about ten minutes, and then Tom and Loren heard him calling to them in an excited voice.
“Oh, fellows! Oh, fellows!” shouted Ralph. “Come here. Come as quick as you know how.”