“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.”
Silas protested that he couldn’t see any sense in such a law as that, but he lent his aid in pushing off the flat.
Dan, who was almost too angry to breathe, had more than half a mind to stay at home; but his curiosity to hear and see all that was said and done when the prisoner was turned over to the officers of the law impelled him to think better of it. When the flat was shoved off, he jumped in and picked up one of the oars.
CHAPTER XXXII
We have said that Tom Hallet was so anxious to help his unlucky friend Bob in some way that he joined the very first squad that went out in search of him.
The man who had the name of being the leader of it was the sheriff’s deputy; but the two stalwart young farmers who belonged to his party were longer of limb than he was, and they pushed ahead at such a rate that the deputy speedily fell to the rear, and stayed there during the most of the day.
“Me and Cyrus have come out to win that there reward,” said one of the young men, when Tom remonstrated with them for leaving the officer so far behind, “and we can’t do it by loafing along like that sheriff does. We’ve got a mortgage to pay off on the farm, and we don’t know any easier way to raise the money for it than to capture one of them rogues.”