“’Cause I follered him. That’s what kept me out all night. I was lookin’ for it when I heard Swan an’ the rest of the guides comin’. I wisht Jakey would hurry up an’ come.”
“Say, pap,” exclaimed Sam. “Let’s me an’ you hunt for the money all by ourselves. If we find it, we’ll hold fast to it an’ never give Jake a cent to pay him for bein’ so stingy.”
“I’d like mighty well if we could do it,” answered Matt. “But I looked high an’ low for it all last night, an’ not a thing that was shaped like a grip-sack could I find. I’m jest done out with tiredness. You look for it, Sammy, an’ I’ll lay down here an’ take a little sleep.”
Without waiting to hear whether or not this proposition was agreeable to Sam, the squatter stretched his heavy frame upon the leaves, pulled his remnant of a hat over his face and prepared for rest. Sam looked curiously at him for a moment, then arose to his feet and disappeared. He went straight to the log behind which Jake had concealed himself when alarmed by Ralph Farnsworth’s approach, scraped a few leaves together for a bed, and laid himself down upon it. But before he went to sleep he made up his mind that he would not say a word to his father about the loss of the guns; it would hardly be safe. Sam knew that his father expected to make some money out of those guns, and when he found that he could not do it, he would be apt to lose his temper and try to take satisfaction out of somebody.
“That would be me,” soliloquized Sam, “’cause I am the nighest to his hand. I guess I’d best pertend that I don’t know nothin’ about them guns. Let pap find out for himself that they are gone, an’ then he’ll think that Swan found ’em when he found the canoe.”
Having come to this decision Sam settled himself for a comfortable nap, from which he was aroused an hour before dark by his father’s stentorian voice. He got upon his feet and brushed the leaves from his clothing before he answered.
“Well, what’s the use of yellin’ that-a-way an’ tellin’ Swan an’ all the rest of the guides where you be?” shouted Sam. “Here I am.”
“Have you found the money?” asked Matt, in lower tones.
“Course not. If I had, I should ’a’ waked you up. ’Tain’t in these here woods, pap, ’cause if there’s an inch of ’em that I ain’t peeped into sence you’ve been asleep I don’t know where it is.”
“I tell you it is hid in these woods too,” said the squatter, angrily. “Didn’t I foller Jake up here an’ hang around while he was hidin’ the grip-sacks an’ the canoe?”