“But they have been loafing around the lake for a whole week, doing nothing but holding stolen interviews with Matt Coyle and his boys,” said Roy. “I tell you I don’t like the way those worthies put their heads together. I believe they are in ca-hoots. If they are not, how does it come that Tom and his cousins can see Matt as often as they want to, while the guides and landlords, who are so very anxious to have him arrested, can not find him or obtain any satisfactory news of him?”
“That’s the very reason they can’t find him—because they want to have him arrested, and Matt knows it,” observed Joe. “But why Tom doesn’t reveal Matt’s hiding-place to the constable is more than I can understand. Did it ever occur to you that perhaps Matt has some sort of a hold on those boys, and that they are afraid to go against him?”
“I have thought of it,” replied Arthur. “I have never been able to get it out of my head that Tom acted suspiciously on the day your canvas canoe was stolen. He played his part pretty well, but I believed then, and I believe now, that he knew that canoe was gone before he came back to the beach.”
“I know Tom didn’t show much enthusiasm when we started after that bear, and that he did not go very far from the pond,” assented Joe. “It is possible that he saw Matt steal my canoe, and that he made no effort to stop him; but I think you are mistaken when you say that they are in ca-hoots. I don’t believe they have any thing in common. Tom is much too high-toned for that. I know that he has been seen in Matt’s company a time or two, but I am of the opinion that they met by accident and not by appointment.”
“But Tom knew the officers were looking for Matt, and what was the reason he didn’t tell them that he had seen him?” demanded Arthur.
“He probably would if he hadn’t thought that we were the ones that wanted him arrested,” replied Joe. “Tom and his cousins do not like us, and Matt Coyle might steal us poor, and they would never lift a hand or say a word to prevent it. But we are safe from them now. Even if they knew where to find us, Matt and his boys are much too lazy to walk twelve miles through the thick woods just to get into a fight with us.”
Perhaps they were, and perhaps they were not. Time will show.
If you have read the first volume of the “Forest and Stream Series,” you will recollect that the story it contained was told by “Old Durability,” Joe Wayring’s Fly-rod. In concluding his interesting narrative, Fly-rod said that he would step aside and give place to his “accommodating friend,” the Canvas Canoe, who, in the second volume of the series, would describe some of the incidents that came under his notice while he was a prisoner in the bands of the Indian Lake vagabonds, Matt Coyle and his two worthless boys, Jake and Sam. I am the Canvas Canoe, at your service, and I am now ready to redeem that promise.
You will remember that the last duty I performed for my master, Joe Wayring, was to take him and Fly-rod up to the “little perch hole,” leaving Arthur Hastings and Roy Sheldon in the pond to angle for black bass. Joe preferred to fish for perch, because he was afraid to trust his light tackle in a struggle with so gamey a foe as a bass; but, as luck would have it, he struck one the very first cast he made, and got into a fight that was enough to make any angler’s nerves thrill with excitement.
The battle lasted half an hour; and when it was over and the fish safely landed, Joe discovered that it was growing dark. While he was putting Fly-rod away in his case I happened to look up the creek, and what should I see there but the most disreputable looking scow I ever laid my eyes on? I had never seen him before, but I knew the crew he carried, for I had had considerable experience with them. They were the squatter and his boys, who, as you know, had sworn vengeance against Joe Wayring and his friends, because Joe’s father would not permit them to live on his land.