“Now, then,” said Matt, “put him together, ready for business—you can do it better’n I can—while I go in after my pipe an’ rifle.”
“Say, Jakey,” said Sam, in a delighted whisper, as Matt tip-toed into the cabin, “if pap finds the camp of them robbers won’t we be rich folks, though? He ain’t goin’ in fur the reward, pap ain’t. Looks to me as though he had got his eye on them six thousand.”
That was the way it looked to Jake too; and although he knew that his father could not find the money, hidden as it was under five feet and more of muddy water, he was afraid that he would see something at Haskins’ landing that would make him open his eyes. And Jake’s fears were realized. In less than an hour after he and his brother put me into the water at the head of the outlet, Matt had paddled up to Haskins’ landing and was taking in all the signs he found there with the eye of an Indian trailer. Nothing escaped his scrutiny. He saw the impress of Jake’s bare feet in the mud, the prints of boots, the marks of the canvas canoe on the beach, and noted the place where the bags had been left while the robbers were being ferried across the lake. Then he sat down on a log, smoked a pipe, and thought about it.
“What was that boy’s notion for tellin’ me that them robbers couldn’t have crossed the lake ’cause they didn’t have no boat, do you reckon?” said he, to himself. “Come to think of it, he did look kinder queer when I said I was goin’ to look about Haskinses’ landin’ jest to see what I could find here, and I’ll bet that that boy knows more about them robbers than any body else in these woods. He took ’em over, Jakey did—all the signs show that. Course he didn’t do it for nothin’, so he must have money. Now what’s to be done about it?”
This was a question upon which the squatter pondered long and deeply. If Jake had earned some money the night before, of course Matt ought to have the handling of it, for he was the head of the family; but how was he going to get it? He knew the boy too well to indulge in the hope that he would surrender it on demand, and as for whipping it out of him—well, that wouldn’t be so easy, either; for Jake was light of foot, and quite as much at home in the woods as his father was. It wouldn’t do for Matt to come to an open rupture with his hopeful son, for if he did who would steal the bacon and potatoes the next time the larder ran low? Sam was too timid to forage in the dark, running the risk of encounters with vicious dogs and settlers who might be on the watch, and even Matt had no heart for such work. He must bide his time and pick Jake’s pocket after he had gone to bed, unless—here the squatter got upon his feet, knocked the ashes from his pipe, and shoved the canvas canoe out into the lake.