He was the first man who had found employment on the ranch, and, like the rest of the hired help, he thought everything of Bob, and looked with distrust upon those who had come there to take his dead father’s place.
Leaving an assistant to attend to his duties in the kitchen, Ike retreated to the grove shortly after the boat went into the canyon, and he had been there ever since. He liked to be there. It had been the lost boy’s favorite resort, and, while he was hidden among the trees, he could give full vent to his sorrow, for there was no one looking on to accuse him of a lack of manhood.
Ike peeped cautiously through the bushes to see where Arthur was, and then he shook his fists at him, and moved away from his place of concealment with long, noiseless strides.
He walked with that firm, determined step that men sometimes adopt when they have made up their minds to do something; but, when he reached the porch, he came to a sudden stop, pulled off his hat, and scratched his head vigorously.
The operation must have put new ideas into his mind, for he went on around the house, and made his way to the corral in which the riding-horses were kept.
Putting a saddle and bridle on the first horse he caught, he forded the river at the place where the lake emptied into it, and as soon as he reached the opposite bank, he started on a gallop for Mr. Evans’ ranch.
“So that’s the way my poor Bob come to go into that awful hole, is it?” said Ike, speaking in a loud voice, as if he were addressing some one at a distance. “Sam sawed the oars so that they would break when the boys laid out their strength on them—he did it because he knew that Bob didn’t want him on the ranch, most likely—and that scoundrel, Arthur, knew all about it, and never said a word. Of course, he didn’t, for he wanted his cousin’s money. I knew them two would make trouble sooner or later, but I didn’t think they would be at it for a while yet.”
It was a strange and startling story that Ike had to tell when he reached Mr. Evans’ ranch.
That gentleman listened calmly, and the narrator noticed that he did not seem to be at all surprised at what he heard. He, too, had been expecting trouble, but he had not looked for it so soon.
“When I saw that Bob’s oar was broken, I told Jacobs that I would give anything for a chance to examine it,” said Mr. Evans, when Ike finished his story. “It was made on purpose to stand that current, and I knew the boy could not have broken it unless it had been tampered with.”