“Ah! you’ve got my rifle, have you?” said Archie. “I wondered what had become of it. There’s a load in it, and much good may it do you. I haven’t any more to give you.”
It was perhaps fortunate for our heroes that the men did not ask any more questions about the ammunition. Fred and Eugene had thrown away their cartridges during the first night’s march, declaring that if the hunters were going to steal their rifles, they needn’t think they would get powder and bullets for nothing. Archie, however, who had not seen anything of his Maynard, and believed that it had been hidden somewhere near the camp, kept his cartridges, but when Zack and Silas overhauled the wagons, his rifle was thrown out with the rest of the things, and then Archie pulled out his ammunition and dropped it behind the boulder on which he was sitting.
“You can’t get anything to shoot in that rifle in this country,” said Archie, “and since it is of no use to you, hadn’t you better give it back to me? I have owned it a long time and don’t like to part with it.”
“I reckon I’ll keep it,” said Simon, in reply. “I reckon me an’ my pardners can use it.”
“Who’s your pardners?” demanded Zack, quickly. “Not me an’ Sile, I can tell you, fur you hain’t goin’ a step with us—not one step.”
This showed that there had been some sort of an agreement between Simon and the hunters. No doubt when the million dollars were secured, they were to share it equally and travel in company.
“If you’ll fool us once you’ll do it agin; so we don’t want nothing more to do with you,” said Silas. “You can go your trail an’ we’ll go our’n.”
“But I don’t know whar to go,” said Simon, who was utterly confounded; “an’ I can’t stay here.”
“No, you can’t stay here,” said the old man. “When you were tramping about the country begging your living, I took you in and cared for you, and now you have turned against me! You can’t stay here.”
“This yer’s a big country, an’ thar’s plenty of room in it fur all of us,” said Zack.