“Well, you see you ain’t, don’t you?” answered the squatter, calling all his courage to his aid. “You stole them two guns of me an’ them six thousand dollars besides. We’ve come after ’em, an’ we’re goin’ to have ’em, too.”
“I haven’t seen your guns or your money, either,” replied Tom. “Who told you I had?”
“Nobody,” said Matt, who never could take time to think when he was excited or angry. “We jest suspicion you.”
“Then go and ‘suspicion’ somebody else. You are wide of the mark. I know you have lost the guns, for Swan found them when he found the canoe. Morris told me a little while ago that Hanson had paid him part of the reward. But I didn’t know about the money. Here’s Jake; Why don’t you make him tell where it is? Every body knows that he hid it—”
“Yes; but it ain’t there now,” shouted Matt. “It’s been took outen the place where he left it, an’ none of us don’t know nothin’ about it.”
What evil genius put it into Tom’s head to say, “I know where it is?”
“That’s what we suspicioned all along, an’ that’s what brung us here,” exclaimed the squatter, shaking his switch at the boy, while Sam’s face grew as white as a sheet. He recoiled a step or two and looked anxiously at Tom.
“But I haven’t got it and never had,” continued the latter. “Do you know where No-Man’s Pond is? Well, if you will go there, you will find your old friend Wayring and his party; and they’ve got your money.”
“Why—why, how did they come by it?” stammered Matt.
“How do you suppose I know? They probably found it where Jake hid it. I don’t know of any other way they could get it.”