Godfrey slowly and almost painfully arose to his feet, bringing his rifle up with him, and the boy heard the lock click as the hammer was drawn back. He looked dangerous, and Bob began to fear that he had done a very foolhardy thing, in following up so desperate a man as Godfrey was known to be when he was aroused. “Hallo!” he cried. “What’s the matter with you?”
“Ye can’t shet up my eyes with yer spike buck,” answered Godfrey, in savage tones. “Ye’r on my trail.”
“On your trail?” repeated Bob, innocently.
“Yes, an’ I know it. Ye’r a follerin’ me; but it’ll take more’n one man to tote me to the calaboose. Ye hear me speakin’?”
“Why, I don’t understand you.”
“Wal, I reckon ye know thar was a furse in the settlement, an’ that they blamed me fur it, don’t ye?” demanded Godfrey, impatiently.
“O, is that what you mean?” exclaimed Bob. He leaned his gun against the log, and walking up to the fire warmed his hands over the coals. Godfrey looked sharply at him for a moment and then dropped the butt of his rifle to the ground. “No,” continued Bob, “I did not hear of any fuss in the settlement. I knew that you and that city chap, Clarence Gordon, played a good joke on Don, and kept him tied up in your potato cellar all night; but that can’t be what you are staying out here in the woods for? It has all blown over now. Nobody ever speaks of it.”
Godfrey looked suspiciously at Bob, and then his face brightened. Perhaps things were not so bad after all, he told himself. His brow became clouded again a moment afterward, however, when he thought of the highway robbery of which he had been guilty. But he might have made his mind easy on this score, for there was no one in the settlement who knew anything about it, not even the general; for his brother had never mentioned the circumstance in his letters.
“Is that all ye heared about me?” asked Godfrey.
“Well, no,” answered Bob. “I understand that you went home night before last and took the hundred and sixty dollars Dave made by trapping quails.”