"Well, about one o'clock, or a little after, while I was a setting there and waiting for the game to come along, I heared a noise in the brush, and, all on a sudden, out popped this feller. He was running like he'd been sent for, and that's why I suspicioned him. Of course I didn't know him from Adam, but I asked him would he stop a bit. And he 'lowed he would, when he seed my gun looking him square in the eye. I brung him home, and your mam she passed out the clothes-line, and I tied him up."
"Where is mother now?" asked Joe.
"Gone off after more sewing, I reckon," replied Silas, in a tone which seemed to say that it was a matter that was not worth talking about. "She helped me figger up what I would get for catching him, and then she dug out. I'm worth almost as much as you be now, Joey, and that there mean Dan, who wouldn't stay by and help me, he ain't got a cent. Now, don't you wish you hadn't played that trick on me this morning."
"Never mind that," interposed Joe, who did not care to stand by and listen to an angry altercation which might end in a fight or a foot-race between his father and Dan. "If we are going to deliver this man to the sheriff to-night, we had better be moving."
"Do you reckon the sheriff will hand over the twenty-five hundred when I give up the prisoner?" inquired Silas, as the party walked down the bank toward the flat.
"Of course he won't."
"What for won't he?"
"Because he hasn't got it with him. Perhaps it was never put into his hands at all. I haven't received my share yet."
"Then I reckon I'd best hold fast to him till I'm sure of my money," said Silas, reflectively. "I guess I won't take him down to old man Warren's to-night."
"I guess you will, unless you want to get into trouble with the law," said Joe, decidedly. "If you don't give him up of your own free will, the sheriff will take him away from you."