“Oh, mustn’t he?” snarled the officer. “We’ll see about that!”
“It will be all right to move him,” the surgeon said.
“Of course! And I’ll see that the boys are kept away from him, too.”
“It may be just as well to put them in separate cells,” suggested the surgeon. “One of them may confess, after going hungry a short time.”
Clay was angry enough to fight, but he knew that such a course would be worse than useless. These men had the power to do as they pleased until higher officers were reached.
It will be understood, however, that he felt pretty ugly at the idea of being parted from the injured boy. That would be a great deal worse than having the river trip interrupted and being locked up in a Canadian prison, he thought.
He argued with the policeman and the surgeon to no purpose. Their eyes were fixed on the reward. The thought, the prospect, of receiving so great a sum completely blinded their eyes to all sense of justice and humanity. Clay resolved, then, that they should both suffer for their brutality if they removed the boy and locked them all up.
He thought of telling the policeman of the men who had been hiding in the mountains. To his mind these were the robbers. He believed that the officer might gain the $10,000 reward by following his instructions, and that he, himself, might secure the $5,000 reward by pointing out the whereabouts of the men.
But he instantly banished the thought of helping the brutal officer get a cent of the money. He would rather take the chance of letting the men get away and losing his own share of the money offered for their arrest and conviction.
Things looked pretty dark for the boys just then. If arrested and locked up, the Rambler would be at the mercy of the lawless men who frequented the river there. Without doubt, all the stores would be stolen. Even the boat itself might be taken. It looked like the end of their long-planned journey down the Columbia river.