“All I’ve got to say is, that I wish I was to home—I do, by gum!”
This was the landlord, tired, probably, of sleeping out at night, and working and walking by day. John knew his voice, also.
“I wish to goodness you were!” came the voice of Duff, disgustedly, “but all the miserable, sneaking robbing of travelers’ clothes at night, that you ever did wouldn’t be a drop in the bucket beside this buried fortune if we can only get hold of it. No man knows better than me what a lot of wealth that chest has in it—unless it be that Quaker, blast him!”
“Well, we might go back to Fort Pitt for a spell, anyhow, an’ rest up,” suggested Quilling.
“Not by a jugful!” Duff answered. “We’ll follow those blasted youngsters up, and find out what they know. Like as not they, and not the Quaker, have got that letter. They’re a blamed sight sharper than you give ’em credit for, and the next time you let one of ’em get away from you, I’ll boot you seven ways for Sunday, see if I don’t!”
Duff’s tones were full of emphasis, and it was all very interesting to the boy concealed behind the tree trunk and the giant limb. But he heard no more; for with, “So, now, stir yourselves,” the chief of the conspirators walked out from the tree-top. He went toward a small beech in which John now noticed that the quarters of a deer had been hung, beyond the reach of wolves.
The fellow’s course took him within a few yards of the hidden boy, but he passed on, unconscious of the eyes which watched him.
Knowing that in returning to the camp with the deer Duff would be almost certain to see him, John waited only till the man’s back was toward him, then leaped to his feet and ran.
CHAPTER X.
THE QUAKER’S STORY.
Now it happened that Hank Quilling, the tavern keeper, was gazing straight toward the spot where John was concealed at the moment the boy sprang up, as if out of the earth. The surprise that the fellow suffered as he saw the lad so upset him that he could do nothing but yell, and yell lustily he did: