Silas was so completely wrapped up in his own affairs that the boys got close to him before he was aware of their presence, and it is the greatest wonder in the world that he did not shoot one of them in his excitement.
He was really alarmed; but when he had taken a good look at the newcomers, in order to make sure of their identity, he laid his gun across the chair, pushed up his sleeves, and shook both his fists at Dan.
"So you thought you would fool your poor old pap this morning, did you, you little snipe?" he shouted. "Well, you see what you made by it, don't you?"
"I never tried to make a fool of you," stammered Dan, who had a faint idea that he understood the situation. "I never in this wide world!"
"Hush your noise when I tell you I know better," yelled Silas; and one would have thought, by the way he acted and looked, that he was very angry, instead of very much delighted, at the way things had turned out. "Here you have been and tramped all over them mountings, and never got a cent for it, while I have made a clean twenty-five hundred dollars, if I counted it up right on my fingers; and I reckon I did, 'cause your mam put in a figger to help me now and then."
"Why, how did it happen?" exclaimed Joe, who, up to this moment, had not been able to do anything but stand still and look astonished.
He knew that his father had captured one of the robbers without help from any one, and that was more than fifty other men had been able to do, with all their weary tramping.
"The way it happened was just this," said Silas, who could not stand in one place for a single moment. "Hold on there!" he added, turning fiercely upon his prisoner, who just then moved uneasily upon the bench, as if he were trying to find a softer spot to sit on. "I've got my eyes onto you, and you might as—"
"Why, father, he can't get away," Joe interposed. "You've got him tied up too tight. Why don't you let out that rope a little?"
"'Cause he's worth a pile of money—that's why!" exclaimed Silas; "and I won't let the rope out not one inch, nuther. You, Joe, keep away from there."