“Well, then, what made you hide the money where he could find it, if you didn’t want to get a whack from his fist?” said he. “If you had brung it straight to me, like you oughter done, Joe never would a hit you.”
“That makes another thing that I’ve got to pay him for,” groaned Jake. “Hurry up an’ get through with him, pap, ’cause I want to get at him.”
“Then go an’ cut some good tough hickories, both of you. They’ll be back in a few minutes,” said Matt, as the boys took their knives from their pockets and disappeared from view, “an’ before they come, you had better make up your mind to tell me what you have done with that money. I’ve got all the proof I want that it was seed in your camp-basket yesterday.”
“I ain’t namin’ no names,” replied Matt; and then, for the first time, it occurred to him that if the valises were in Joe’s camp-basket yesterday they might be there yet, and he at once proceeded to satisfy himself on that point. The contents of all the baskets were quickly thrown out upon the ground, but the valises were not brought to light.
“I done that jest ’cause I happened to think of it, an’ not ’cause I expected to find the money,” Matt exclaimed. “I knowed you would hide it as soon as you got here. The boys is comin’. They’d like amazin’ well to larrup you on your bare back, an’ they will do it too; we’ll all do it, if you don’t quit bein’ so pig-headed an’ tell us right where we can go an’ find that money. Speak quick. Will you do it?”
“I tell you I don’t know any thing about it,” replied Joe, “and you can’t make me say any thing else. If any body told you a different story, which I don’t believe, he fooled you. That’s all I’ve got to say.”
Just then Jake and Sam came out of the bushes with their hands full of switches.
CHAPTER XIV. THE GUIDE “SURROUNDS” MATT‘S CAMP.
“How do you like the looks of _them_?” said Matt Coyle, picking up one of the switches and flourishing it before Joe’s face. “It’s hickory an’ it’ll cut. Whew! I don’t like to think how it will cut when it’s laid on good and strong. Now, then, where is it? You see that we are in dead ’arnest, I reckon, don’t you? What have you done with it?”
It was at this juncture that the canvas canoe carrying Roy Sheldon and Arthur Hastings came around the point in full view of the camp. The boys were so surprised at what they saw before them that for a minute or two they were incapable of action. They were as motionless as so many sticks of wood; and, although their blood boiled with indignation when they saw Jake so unmercifully beaten, they never said a word. But, when Matt drew back as if he were about to strike Joe with the switch he held in his hand, they had life enough in them.