“Well, you wouldn’t have found the skiffs, even if I hadn’t collared you before you knowed I was within a mile of you,” answered Matt. “Rube told the guides where we hid ’em, an’ they took ’em off the same day they carried away your canvas canoe. But I’m glad you come after one of ’em, for it brung you plump into the arms of your pap, who has been waitin’ for more’n a week for you to came an’ show him where you hid them six thousand dollars. Be you ready to do it now, Jakey?”
“I allers kalkerlated to do it,” replied Jake. “Sure hope to die, I did.”
“I’m glad to hear it; but I’d been gladder if you had brung the money to me the minute you found it. Untie his feet, ole woman, an’ we’ll go back to camp.”
“An’ my hands, too,” added Jake.
“You don’t need your hands to walk with,” said Matt.
“But I need ’em to keep the bresh from hittin’ me in the face while we are goin’ through the woods, don’t I?”
“Oh, shucks! The lickin’ you’ll get from the bresh won’t be a patchin’ to the one you’ll get from me if we don’t find them grip-sacks tol’able easy,” replied Matt in significant tones. “Now, you go on ahead, takin’ the shortest cut, an’ me an’ yer mam’ll foller.”
Having helped the boy to his feet, Matt waved his hand toward the cove, as if he were urging a hound to take up a trail, and Jake staggered off. I say staggered, because he was too weak to move with his usual springy step. When his strength failed through long fasting, his courage also left him, and Jake had at last determined that if he could secure one of the skiffs he would take the money to Indian Lake and give it up to the sheriff. He was afraid to surrender it to his father, because he knew that Matt would thrash him for not giving it up before. His father came upon him suddenly while he was making his way around the hatchery toward the place where the skiffs had been concealed, and Jake, too weak to run and too spiritless to resist, was easily made captive. He was very hungry, and repeatedly begged his father to untie his hands and give him a slice off the loaf of bread that he could see in the bundle the old woman carried on her arm; but Matt would not listen to him.
“Show us the money first, Jakey,” was his invariable reply, “an’ then you shall have all you want. But not a bite do you get till I feel the heft of them grip-sacks. ’Tain’t likely that I’ll go outen my way to please a ongrateful scamp of a boy who finds six thousand dollars an’ hides it from his pap.”
The long ten-mile tramp through the woods exhausted the last particle of Jake Coyle’s strength, and when he led his father to the brink of the cavity at the foot of the poplar he wilted like a blade of grass that had been struck by the frost.