Rube Royall was not the only one who did not know what to think of him.
CHAPTER XII.
ABOUT VARIOUS THINGS.
When the watchman took possession of his shake-down Matt Coyle and his family, following their usual custom, adjourned to the open air and sat on the logs in the wood-yard, smoking their pipes, talking over their troubles, and consulting as to the means they ought to employ to “get even” with the guides and other well-to-do people who were so relentlessly persecuting them. On this particular morning they talked about Jake and his unaccountable absence; that is, Matt and his wife did the talking, and Sam sat and listened, all the while looking as innocent as though he had never heard of the Irvington bank robbery, or felt the weight of the two valises that contained the six thousand stolen dollars. His brother Jake would have betrayed himself a dozen times in as many minutes; but Sam did nothing to arouse suspicion against him. Matt at last gave it as his opinion that Jake intended to run away with the money, and repeated what he had said the night before—that a man who had spent years of his life in dodging constables was not to be beaten by one of his own boys. Then he filled a fresh pipe and strolled off toward the hatchery. He thought that was the safest place for him, for if the sheriff came back after Jake Matt would see him when he signaled for a boat to take him across the outlet, and have plenty of time to run to the cabin and warn his family.
Of course the squatter did not show himself openly. He took up a position from which he could see every thing that went on about the hatchery, and smoked several pipes while he waited for something to “turn up.” If the sheriff was looking for Jake, he certainly did not come near the outlet; but somebody else did. It was Tom Bigden. Matt, of course, was not aware that the boy had come there seeking an interview with him; but when he saw him loitering about the hatchery with no apparent object an idea suddenly popped into the squatter’s head.
“I jest know that Bigden boy didn’t tell me the truth when he said that him an’ his cousins was strapped for money, an’ that they would have to go to Mount Airy before they could buy them guns of me,” soliloquized Matt. “I’ll watch my chance to ketch him while he is on his way to camp, an’ tell him that I can’t wait no ten days for my money. I must have it to onct, ’cause I want to buy that furnitur’ of Rube.”
While he was talking to himself in this way Matt got up and started for the lake; and, as we have seen, he got there in time to intercept Tom Bigden. So far as Matt was concerned, the interview was a most unsatisfactory one. Tom was so very haughty and independent that the squatter knew, before he had exchanged half a dozen words with him, that there was “something wrong somewheres.”
When Tom paddled away, after promising to meet Matt the next morning at seven o’clock, he left the man revolving some deep problems in his mind. Matt never once suspected that Tom had found the guns, but he did fear that he had found the valises that contained the bank’s money, and the thought was enough to drive him almost frantic. As soon as Tom was out of sight he caught up his rifle and posted off to the cabin to see if Jake had been there during his absence; but neither Sam nor the old woman could tell anything about him.
“I’d give every thing I’ve got in the world if I could get my hand on that boy’s collar, for jest one minute,” cried Matt, as he stormed about the wood-yard shaking his fists in the air. “He kalkerlates to ruinate the whole of us by runnin’ off with them six thousand. I’ll tell you what we’ll do, ole woman. To-morrer mornin’ at seven o’clock I shall have money enough to buy the furnitur’ we need, an’ soon’s we get it we’ll go up to the cove an’ camp there agin. Jake hid that money somewheres around there, an’ if he don’t take it away to-day he won’t never get it, for we shall be there to stop him. Don’t you reckon that’s the best thing we can do?”
Too highly excited to remain long in one place, Matt did not stop to hear his wife’s answer, but posted off to the cove after the guns. He might never see a cent of the six thousand dollars, he told himself, but the guns he was sure of.
“That Bigden boy didn’t say, in so many words, that he had fifty dollars to pay for them, but he winked, an’ that’s as good an answer as I want. He wouldn’t dare fool me, knowin’ as he does that I can have him ’rested any time I feel like it. Here is where we left ’em,” said Matt, stooping down in front of the log in which he and his boys had concealed the property he wanted to find. “But I do think in my soul that somebody has been here. The chunks is all scattered around an’—yes, sir; the guns is gone.”