“No, I don’t,” answered Matt, blurting out the truth before he thought.
“So I supposed. Well, I do. When the sheriff and his posse were coming home, after capturing those bank robbers, they found Joe Wayring’s canvas canoe, and likewise the Lefever hammerless and Winchester rifle.”
Tom Bigden blocks Matt Coyle’s game.
“Whoop!” yelled the squatter. “’Tain’t so, nuther. They wasn’t all hid in the same place.”
“I know it,” replied Tom, who knew just nothing at all about it. The canvas canoe might have been concealed in that hollow log and Tom and his cousins would have been none the wiser for it; because after the guns had been brought to light they did not look for any thing else. “You must remember that there were several men in that posse, and that they could cover a good deal of ground in an hour’s time. They searched every inch of those woods, and found—”
Matt opened his mouth and gasped for breath.
“Did they—did they find—”
“No,” answered Tom, who knew what Matt would have said if he could. “They did not find any money. Your Jake is the only one who knows where that is.”
“I know where it is, too,” said the squatter, whose lip quivered as if he had half a mind to cry about it. “But the trouble is that I can’t find it.”