“I am glad of it,” exclaimed Bob. “I am glad of it,” he repeated, as he pictured to himself the despair that must have taken possession of the Boy Trapper when he saw his hard earnings thus unexpectedly snatched from his grasp. “It serves him just right; for if it hadn’t been for him I should have had a nice little breech-loader hanging on the pegs in my room in a few days more. I hope he will be served in the same way every time he gets out of his place, and tries to shove himself up among white folks. I hope, too, that they’ll not catch Godfrey.”
“You need not lose any sleep worrying over that,” said Mr. Owens, with a smile. “Godfrey knows every nook and corner of the swamp, and all the constables in the county couldn’t find him. Besides, what could they do with him if they did find him?”
“Couldn’t they do anything with him?” asked Bob.
“Of course not. He is David’s father, and the law gives him the right to take every penny the boy earns up to the time he is twenty-one years old.”
“Good again,” cried Bob. “It is the best news I ever heard, and will give me the best night’s rest I have had for three weeks. Good-night, father.”
Mr. Owens picked up his paper again, and Bob went to his room and tumbled into bed.
“I tell you it makes me feel easier to know that that ragamuffin will never enjoy the money he has cheated me out of,” thought Bob, who, in the satisfaction he felt at David’s loss entirely forgot the injury Lester Brigham had done him by his confession, “but at the same time I am sorry to hear that that worthless Godfrey has come into possession of it. I ought to have it—the whole of it, now that Lester has gone back on me, and if there was any way that I could think of to outwit Godfrey and get hold of it—By gracious!” exclaimed Bob, in great excitement, “that’s a bright idea!”
Bob settled his head into a comfortable position on his pillow and lay for a long time thinking over something his father had said during their recent conversation. Mr. Owens had remarked that Godfrey knew every nook and corner of the swamps, and that all the constables in the county could not find him. Bob told himself that he knew every inch of the swamps, too, and that if anybody could trace Godfrey to his hiding-place, he was the one. But he did not believe that the fugitive was in the swamp. He thought that Godfrey’s camp could not be very far away—in fact, that their plantation must be nearer to it than any other, or else the man would not have come to Mr. Owens’s smoke-house to steal bacon. After Bob had reasoned in this way for a while he must have arrived at some conclusions that delighted him, for he suddenly raised himself upright in bed and struck his open palm with his clenched hand.
“Perhaps all the constables in the county can’t find him,” said he to himself, “but I believe I can. At any rate I’ll start out in search of his camp in the morning just as soon as I have eaten my breakfast, and if I discover it I’ll find some way to get hold of that money or my name is not Owens.”
Bob lay down again and rolled over to think about it; and he thought about it for hours. The longer he turned the matter over in his mind, the more excited he became; and, although he had told his father that he could enjoy the best night’s rest he had had for three weeks, he did not fall asleep until about two hours before he was called to breakfast. The first things he thought of after he opened his eyes were the hundred and sixty dollars Godfrey had in his possession, and the plans he had determined to put into execution in order to get them into his own hands. It never occurred to him then that he was about to act the part of a thief, for he was so wholly engrossed in thinking about the fine hunting and fishing outfit that he intended to purchase with the money, if he got it, that he could not bestow a thought upon anything else. His chances for success seemed so bright that he became excited while he dwelt upon them, but he succeeded in controlling himself so that the members of the family did not notice it; and when he had eaten a hearty breakfast and put a generous lunch into his game-bag, he shouldered his father’s rifle and left the house.