Joe replied that he would.
"By-the-way," chimed in Bob, "did this robber of yours have a gun of any description in his hands when he was captured?"
"No."
"Then, Joe, you and I are just that much out of pocket. The guns are gone up."
"What has become of them?"
"They are out in the hills somewhere," answered Bob. "When the robbers made up their minds that they had better let me go, one of them had my gun and the other had yours; but the robber Brierly captured says that the weapon impeded his flight, and so he threw it away. Whereabouts he was in the hills when he got rid of it he can't tell. No doubt your gun was thrown away also, and the chances are not one in a thousand that we shall ever find them again."
While this conversation was going on, Silas Morgan, who stood at the foot of the steps that led to the porch, kept pulling Joe by the coat-sleeve, and whispering to him:
"Never mind the guns. Tell the sheriff that I'm powerful anxious to see the color of them twenty-five hundred."
Joe paid no sort of attention to him, and finally Silas became so very much in earnest in his endeavors to attract the boy's notice, that the officer saw it; and when there was a little pause in the conversation, he said carelessly:
"Oh, about the reward, Silas—"