“Oh! excuse me, Jack,” said Josh, falling in step with the other.
“Listen!” he heard Jack say in a low, tense tone; “perhaps we’re going to have some more trouble about this bag after all!”
“Oh! thunder! what do you mean now?” demanded Josh, astounded.
“Here, none of that!” said Jack. “Don’t look so startled, but laugh, just as if I might be telling you a good joke. There, that’s more like it, though I reckon your laugh was half frozen before it got out. Now, pay attention to me!”
“Sure I am, Jack; go right along and tell me what’s up.”
“There are two men watching us come up this bank right now,” Jack went on to say. “We’ve made a turn so it wouldn’t be easy for us to chase back to the boat again. I’ve got a notion, Josh, they’re the very rascals we made give up this bag of boodle last night!”
“What’s that, Jack? However could they get up here; because it was far down the river we left that pair swimming like ducks?”
“Well, I half remember seeing somebody drop off that same slow freight as it ran through; and yeggs like to travel like tramps, you know,” and Jack pointed out upon the river, as though he might be explaining something to his friend.
“Oh! mebbe they were just stealing a ride on the bumpers, and happened to see us acomin’ in to the shore,” suggested Josh. “Yes, of course they’d be apt to guess what fetched us here, and when they glimpsed that precious bag in your hand they knew. But Jack, what can we do? Oh! why didn’t you let me carry our Marlin with us? You see what a valuable thing it’d be right here and now?”