"Safer," returned the cowboy, "but it hasn't got any chairs and nothing to make a light with. Hear the rain, once! Gee, _compadres_, I wouldn't move from here to the cave, through all that water, for a bushel of double eagles."
"Because this Ollie Merton isn't such a friend of yours as you think," said Matt.
George Lorry stiffened in the old, arrogant way.
"I guess I know my friends," he answered frigidly.
"Listen," went on Matt. "When I left the cabin and started along the Waunakee road, some one in the bushes threw a riata at me. It was Big John threw the rope, and along with Big John was this Ollie Merton. They were after that ten thousand dollars, but I played a trick on them and got away with the draft. It was your sister, George, that helped me get away."
"Yes. She was on the Waunakee road with her motor car----"
"The governor would put twenty-five hundred in a runabout for sis," he growled, "and wouldn't scrip up when I wanted a motor boat. Is that right? Is----"
Voices were heard outside, accompanying a slushy crunch of wet gravel. Matt leaped for the light and blew it out.
"Not a word!" he whispered. "That must be Ollie Merton, and we don't want him to see us. There's an overturned catboat--get under it."
Lorry tried to protest, but Matt caught him by the arm and hustled him toward the overturned boat. The boat had been lying under the boys' eyes during their talk. Barely had they secreted themselves when the door opened and two persons walked in, followed by a whirling gust of rain.
"Whoosh!" called a familiar voice, "I'm glad to get out of that, Ollie."
"Big John!" whispered Matt in Lorry's ear. "He's come here with Merton. Keep quiet, now, and listen."
When Matt, Lorry, and McGlory had made forcible entrance into the boathouse, it had been through the door that fronted the river. Merton and Big John had entered through a door at the other end of the house. Thus, for a time, at least, the broken lock on the other door was not discovered.
"Light up," went on the voice of Big John. "And if you've got anything in a bottle, Ollie, trot it out and mebby it'll drive the chill from our bones. I'm not pinin' for an attack of rheumatism."
"I've got that, too," answered Ollie, with a fatuous snicker. "Always keep something for snake bites."