“It’s a p’int that will need a heap of studyin’ to straighten it out,” thought Jake, putting a little more energy into his strokes with the double paddle. “But I’m rich, an’ I needn’t stop with pap no longer’n I’ve a mind to. That’s a comfortin’ idee. Wouldn’t him an’ Sam be hoppin’ if they knowed what had happened to-night? I don’t reckon I’d best have any thing more to say to Rube about them guns. I don’t care for fifty dollars long’s I got six thousand waitin’ for me.”
Jake found the bags where he had left them, and also the five dollars which the robbers had paid him for ferrying them across the lake. He loaded the bags into the canoe, after putting the money into his pocket, and set out for home, which he reached without any further adventure. He took a good deal of pains to avoid the watchman at the hatchery, although there was really no need of it. Rube knew well enough that the food Matt’s wife served up to him three times a day had never been paid for. The first words he uttered when he presented himself at the breakfast table the next morning proved as much.
“Beats the world how you folks keep yourselves in grub so easy,” said he, as he drew one of the stools up to the well-filled board. “I never see you do no work, an’ yet you never go hungry. Well, I don’t know’s it’s any of my business; but I’d like mighty well to make it my business to ’rest them two robbers that’s prowlin’ about in these woods.”
“What robbers?” inquired Matt; while Jake, taken by surprise, bent his head lower over his cracked plate and trembled in every limb.
“I don’t know’s I can give you any better idee of it than by readin’ a little scrap in a paper that Swan give me early this morning,” answered Rube, pushing back his stool and pulling the paper in question from his pocket.
“Swan!” ejaculated Matt, his face betraying the utmost consternation. “Has he been round here?”
Rube replied very calmly that the guide had been around there, adding—
“Him an’ a whole passel of other guides an’ constables come to see me this morning at the hatchery afore sun-up. They told me all about it an’ give me this paper. They was a lookin’ for the robbers.”
“An’ don’t you know that they’re lookin’ for me too?” exclaimed Matt, reproachfully. “An you never come to wake me up so’t I could take to the bresh an’ hide? Spos’n I’d been ketched all along of your not bringin’ me word?”