“Why are they having so much to do with Matt Coyle?” said Arthur. “That looks suspicious.”
“It does indeed,” said Joe, seriously. “I am afraid it means business for us.”
“I don’t see why it should,” replied Mr. Swan. “You stay on this side the lake and let them stay on the other, and you needn’t come together at all. They ain’t going to tramp twelve miles through the woods to that spring-hole just for the sake of getting into a fuss with you.”
“Don’t they know that Matt and his boys are in danger of arrest?” asked Arthur.
“Course they know it. They couldn’t help it, seeing that they come here every few days after supplies and mail,” said the guide. “The guides who saw them talking together didn’t know what to make of it, and I don’t either.”
“There’s something between Tom and Matt, and you may depend upon it,” said Joe. “It has leaked out in Mount Airy that Tom tried to put Matt up to lots of mischief before he went away. He told the squatter that it would be a good plan for him to burn my father’s house, and turn our sailboats adrift so that they would go into the rapids and be smashed to pieces.”
“Well, he’s a bright feller!” exclaimed the guide. “Don’t he know that he will get himself into trouble by that sort of work? There they come now.”
The boys turned about and saw three canoes coming toward the landing. The crews who were handling the paddles must have been surprised to see Joe and his chums there, for as soon as they recognized them they stopped and held a short consultation.
Now, although the two opposing factions to which Tom and Joe belonged felt very bitter toward each other, they had never come to open warfare. They played ball together, always spoke when they met, and tried to be civil; but there was scarcely a boy on either side who would not have been glad to see Tom Bigden neatly thrashed. Prime, Noble, Scott, and the rest of the fellows who made their head-quarters at the Mount Airy drug store disliked him because he had tried to set himself up for a leader among them; and Joe and his friends had no friendship for him because they knew how persistently Tom, aided by his cousins, had tried to injure them ever since he came to the village to live.
“If Tom could point to a single mean thing we ever did to him, I shouldn’t be so much surprised at his hostility,” Joe often said. “But for him to attempt to ride over us rough shod just because he is jealous of us—that’s something we won’t put up with. If he had the least spark of manliness in him, he would quit his under-handed work, come out open and above-board, and settle the matter with a fair stand-up fight. But he is too big a coward to do that, so he tries to sick Matt Coyle onto us.”
