CHAPTER XIX.
CONCLUSION.
THE boats made an early start the next morning, and reached the pond at nine o'clock. Half an hour later they had crossed it, and were moving up the creek where I performed my first exploit, and Joe Wayring so narrowly escaped capture by Matt Coyle and his boys. It annoyed me to think that the squatter and his family had enjoyed so good a supper, and that I had unwittingly provided it for them. It would not have soothed my feelings much if some one had told me that, although that was the first meal I had caught for them, it would not be the last.
"Now, then," said Mr. Swan, after he and his party had listened to Joe's description of the exciting incidents that happened in the creek on the evening of the previous day, "we will divide ourselves into two fleets and take opposite sides of the stream. As we go up, let every one of us keep a bright lookout for a sign. Those robbers could not have got into their scow or landed from it without leaving a trail, and that is what we want to find."
In obedience to these instructions four of the boats kept to one side of the creek, the remaining four pulled over to the other bank, and the hunt began in earnest. Every inch of the shore on both sides was closely scrutinized, but up to three o 1 clock in the afternoon nothing suspicious had been discovered. Mr. Swan began to believe that they had passed the trail long ago without seeing it, and said as much to his employer, adding—
"That villain is sharper than two or three men have any business to be. He and his family, the old woman included, can go through the woods without leaving trail enough for a hound to follow. They never forget to be as careful as they know how, for they have so long lived in constant fear of arrest that—"
The guide suddenly paused, and looked earnestly at Joe and his companions, whose actions seemed to indicate that they had found something that would bear looking into. Their boat was loitering along two or three rods behind the others, Roy and Arthur doing he rowing, while Joe was stretched out flat on the knapsacks, his chin resting on his arms which were supported by the gunwale, and his eyes fastened upon the bank. All at once he started up and said, in a low tone:
"Cease rowing. Look at that."
"Look at what?" demanded Roy, after he and Arthur had run their eyes up and down the bank without seeing any thing that was calculated to excite astonishment. "At those bushes growing in the water? That's nothing, for we've seen bushes growing in the water ever since we came into the creek."
"I am aware of it; but if you will look closely at these particular bushes, you will see that the bark is scraped off some of them, and that they all lean away from the creek as if some heavy body had been dragged over them," answered Joe. "Back port and give way starboard. Let's turn in here; and if we don't find something or other on the opposite side, I shall wonder."
The rowers obeyed, without much confidence as to the result, it must be confessed, and when Mr. Swan and his party arrived, having all turned back to see what it was that had attracted the attention of the boys, neither they nor their boat were in sight. There was something on the bank, however, that instantly caught the sharp eye of one of the guides, who at once proceeded to take himself to task in a way that would have excited his ire if any one else had done it.
"Hit me over the head with a paddle, somebody," said he. "I'm going to throw up my position when I get back to the lake, and quit guiding. I ain't no good any more. I come along here not ten minutes ago, and didn't see what them boys saw at once. Look at them bushes, and then look at that," he added, pulling his boat closer to the bank, and placing the blade of his oar in a little depression in the edge of the water. "Matt Coyle shoved that scow of his'n over them bushes, and that's what barked them and made them bend over that way. He suspicioned that some of us would see it, so he come back and stood right there where my oar is, and tried to straighten the bushes up with a pole or something."
"That's so," said Mr. Swan, to his employer, "Didn't I tell you that he was a sharp one? The tricks that that fellow don't know ain't worth knowing."
Just then a twig snapped on the bank and Joe Wayring came into view. "Don't talk so loud," he whispered, as he held up his finger warningly. "Matt's scow isn't twenty feet from here, and that's all the proof I want that his camp is close at land."
Instantly seven pairs of oars were dropped into the water, and as many boats were forced through the bushes and into the little bay on the other side. There lay the piratical craft which had done her best to send the skiff to the bottom of the pond, but nothing was to be seen or heard of her crew.
"Keep still, every body," cautioned Mr. Swan, in the lowest possible whisper. "They're out there in the woods, but remember that they ain't caught yet, and that they won't be if their ears tell them that we're coming."
Joe afterward said that the trail that led from the scow into the bushes was so plain that a blind man could have followed it; so it seemed that, for once, Matt had forgotten to be careful. No doubt he thought that the bay in which his scow found a resting-place, was so effectually hidden by the bushes in front of it, that it would never be discovered by a pursuing party. We have seen that he had good reason for this belief. If Joe and his chums had decided to remain at the lake and enjoy themselves there while their skiff was being repaired, instead of joining their forces with Mr. Swan's hunting party, it is probable that the squatter's retreat never would have been discovered; and neither would the pursuers—well, I'll wait until I get to that before I tell about it.
Mr. Swan, who was the acknowledged leader of the party, at once shouldered his rifle and began following up the trail, the others falling in in single file behind him. They moved so silently that I could not hear a leaf rustle; and I told myself that the surprise and capture of the squatter and his whole shiftless tribe was a foregone conclusion. I afterward learned that Mr. Swan and the guides who were with him thought so too. Before they had gone fifty yards, the former suddenly stopped and whispered to the man next behind him—
"We are close upon them. I smell smoke."
"And I smell coffee," replied the man to whom the words were addressed, and who sniffed the air as if he were trying to locate the camp by the aid of his nose instead of his eyes, "and bacon."
Shaking his hand warningly at the men behind him, the guide moved forward again with long, noiseless strides. Presently he discovered a thin blue cloud of smoke rising above the bushes close in front of him. He looked at it a moment, and then dashed ahead at the top of his speed, his eager companions following at his heels.
A few hasty steps brought them to the little cleared spot in a thicket of evergreens in which Matt Coyle had made his camp. On one side of it was a lean-to with a roof of boughs, and on the other was the fire, with a battered coffee pot simmering and sputtering beside it. Scattered about over the ground were several slices of half-fried bacon, which had been hurriedly dumped from the pan. A few broken plates and dishes that stood on a log close at hand, bore silent testimony to the fact that the squatter's wife was just getting ready to lay the table, when news was brought to the camp that Mr. Swan and his party were coming. Under the lean-to were some worthless articles in the way of wearing apparel and bed-clothes, but every thing of value had disappeared. There was nothing like a hammerless shot gun or a Winchester rifle to be found.
"The nest is warm, but where are the birds?" exclaimed Mr. Swan's employer, who had jumped into the clearing with his coat off and his fists doubled up, all ready to carry out his threat of pounding Matt Coyle before he was sent to jail.
"Didn't I say that they were sharp?" replied the guide. "The birds have took wing."
"Then take to your heels and catch them," exclaimed his employer. "Can't you follow a trail? They can't have been gone more than five minutes. A hundred dollars to the man that will capture that villain for me."
"And I will add a hundred to it," cried the owner of the stolen Winchester.
The guides did not need these extra inducements, for they had more at stake than these two strangers who spent two months out of every twelve in the woods, and the rest of the year in the city, following some lucrative business or profession. The guides' bread and butter depended upon their exertions, and they were no whit more anxious to effect Matt's capture now, than they were before the two hundred dollars reward had been offered them. At a word from Mr. Swan they separated and began circling around the lean-to to find the trail; but this did not take up two minutes of their time. They found five trails; and a short examination of them showed that they all led away in different directions.
"That trick is borrowed from the plains Indians," said Joe, when Mr. Swan announced this fact to his employer. "Whenever the hostiles find themselves hard pressed by the troops, they break up into little bands, and start off toward different points of the compass; but before they separate, they take care to have it understood where they shall come together again."
"That's a fact," assented the owner of the Winchester. "I have been among those copper-colored gentlemen, when I had nothing to depend on except the speed of my pony; but how does it come that you are so well posted? Have you ever hunted on the plains?"
"No, sir; but I have the promise that I shall some day enjoy that pleasure," answered Joe. "My uncle told me about it. He's been there often. Now the question in my mind is: Did Matt, before his family scattered like so many quails, appoint a place of meeting? If he did, that's where we ought to go."
"Young man, you are a sharp one," said the gentleman, admiringly. "What do you say, Swan?"
The guide appealed to could not say any thing, and neither could the others. Unfortunately they did not know that the squatter had made friends with the vagabonds living in the vicinity of the State hatchery. If they had known it, that was the place they would have started for without loss of time, but they wouldn't have caught him if they had gone there.
"There's a good deal of hard sense in Joe's head," said Mr. Swan, after a short pause. "Of course, Matt and his family will come together again somewhere, but you see the trouble is, we don't know what point they are striking for."
"Can't you follow the trails and find out?"
"Take the plainest one of them trails, and I'll bet every thing I've got that you can't follow it a hundred yards," said Mr. Swan. "It is going to take us a good long month to hunt them down, and we'll be lucky if we do it in that time."
"But we can't wait so long," protested one of the guests. "We must return to the city to-morrow. Our business demands our attention."
The guides consulted in low tones, and so did their employers. Finally one of the latter wrote something on a card and handed it to Mr. Swan, saying:
"If we have done all we can, we might as well go back to the hotel; but before we start, we make you this offer: We will give a hundred dollars apiece to the man who will find our weapons, capture the thief and hold him so that we can come and testify against him. Or, we will give fifty dollars apiece for the guns without the thief, and the same amounts for the thief without the guns. Boys, you are included in that offer."
"Thank you, sir," said Arthur. "It would afford us great satisfaction if we could be the means of restoring your property to you."
"Before we leave here we'll fix things so that Matt won't find much to comfort him if he should accidentally circle around this way after we are gone," said Mr. Swan. "Pile on every thing, boys."
The "boys" understood him and went to work with a will. In less time than it takes to tell it, the lean-to was pulled down and thrown upon the fire, the bed-clothes and dishes were piled on top, the bacon was driven so deeply into the ground by the heels of heavy boots that a hungry hound could hardly have scented it in short, every thing that Matt and his family had left behind in their hurried flight, was utterly destroyed. His scow was not forgotten. They would knock it out of all semblance to a boat when they went back to the creek.
Having started a roaring fire, they were obliged to stay and see it burn itself out, for they dared not leave it for fear that it might set the woods aflame. So they stood around and saw it blaze, grumbling the while over the ill luck that had attended their efforts to capture the cunning squatter, and it was fully three-quarters of an hour before Mr. Swan thought it safe to return to the boats. This delay gave Matt Coyle plenty of time in which to carry out a very neat piece of villainy, some of which I saw, and all of which I heard.
While the scenes I have just described were being enacted in the clearing, there were lively times in the little bay of which I have spoken. You know we were left in company with Matt's scow, the boat in which I rode being drawn up on the bank on one side of him and Mr. Swan's on the other; and no sooner had the hunting party disappeared in the bushes, than we began reviling him the best we knew how. The only reason we didn't break him into kindling wood at once, was because we couldn't. Our will was good enough.
"Get away from here," said Wanderer. (That was the name of Mr. Swan's boat. He had always lived and worked in the company of gentlemen, and he did not like to occupy close quarters with so disreputable a fellow as the scow.)
"Get away from here yourself," was the report. "I was here first, an' I'm going to stay."
"I'll bet you will," said Bushboy. (That was the name of the boat Joe and his chums hired at Indian Lake.) "But you may be sure of one thing: You will stay a wreck."
"That's so," said I. "Joe Wayring will never go away leaving him above the water. He'll break him up so completely that his thief of a master won't know him if he should happen along this way again."
"He will never come this way again until he is on his road to jail," said Wanderer. "Mr. Swan is after him, and he's going to catch him, too."
"Wal, Matt'll go to jail knowin' that he's done a right smart of damage sence he's been layin' around loose in the woods, an' if I am busted up, I shall have the same comfortin' knowledge. Fly-rod has seed me afore. I captured his friend, the canvas canoe—"
"Where is he now?" I interrupted.
"Out there in the bresh, hid away so snug that nobody won't ever find him," was the taunting reply. "Them guns is hid out there too, but not in the same place. Matt come purty near gettin' you as well as the canoe. I heard him say that he almost overtook Joe while he was a runnin' through the woods with you in his hand."
"Yes; and Matt would have got me over the head if he had been able to run a little faster."
"An' Joe would have got a hickory over the back, I tell you," said the old scow. "How do you reckon that that skiff I sent to the bottom of the pond feels by this time?"
"You didn't send him to the bottom of the pond," said I, angrily. "You tried hard enough, but you didn't make it."
The bait-rods and the boats took up the quarrel, and while I listened, I waited impatiently for the return of the hunting party. Presently I heard a slight rustling in the thicket at the head of the bay, but it was not made by the persons I wanted to see. It was Matt Coyle that stuck his ugly face out of the bushes, and his bleared and blood-shot eyes that traveled from one to another of the boats that lay before him. Then he turned and whispered to some one behind him and the whole family came and stood upon the bank. Their sudden appearance made it plain to all of us that the squatter and his backers, after "scattering like so many quails," had run just far enough in different directions to bewilder their pursuers, after which they "circled around" and came back to the bay, intending to continue their flight in the scow, which would leave no trail that could be followed. It was evident, too, that there had been an understanding among them before they separated; otherwise they would not all have been there. When Matt's gaze rested upon trim little boats before him, he said in a low but distinct voice—
"Whoop-ee! Jest look at all them nice skiffs, will you? Ain't we in luck though? Never mind the scow. She's done good work fur us, but we'll leave her behind now an' travel like other white folks do. Old woman, you go round to all them boats an' pick up the grub what's into 'em; Jakey, you an' Sam ketch up the poles an' cookin' things an' every other article you can get your two hands onto. Dump them that'll sink into the water an' chuck them that won't sink as fur into the bresh as you can, so't they won't never find 'em no more. While you are doin' that, I'll pick out two of the best boats fur our own."
"Say, pap, what's the reason we don't carry off the things in place of throwin' on 'em away or sinkin' 'em?" asked Jake.
"'Cause we can't sell 'em, an' we don't want to be bothered with totin' 'em. You will save time if you do jest as I told you. We want to get away from here as sudden as we can."
"An' what'll we do with the boats that we don't take with us?" continued Jake. "Will we bust 'em up?"
"Now, jest listen at the fule!" exclaimed Matt, angrily. "The noise we would make in bustin' on 'em up would bring ole Swan back here a runnin'; an' I don't care to see him with all them other fellers at his back."
The vagabonds worked with surprising celerity, and in a very short space of time two of the finest boats in the lot had been pushed into the water, and the old woman was piling provisions into them by the armful, while Jake and Sam busied themselves in disposing of the other things as their sire had directed. I was sent whirling through the air toward the opposite side of the bay, and sad to relate, was stopped in my headlong flight by a tree, against which I struck with a sounding whack. There was a loud snap, and I fell to the ground helpless. My second joint was broken close to the ferrule.
I lay for a long time where I had fallen—so long that I began to wonder if I was to remain there until my ferrules were all rusted to pieces and I became like the mold beneath me. I heard Matt and his family leave the bay in the stolen boats. I knew when they forced their way through the bushes into the creek, and was greatly astonished to know that they turned down stream toward the pond, the direction in which their pursuers would have to go when they returned to the hotel. But Matt, the sly old fox, had reasoned with himself on this point before he adopted these extraordinary tactics. It lacked only about half an hour of night-fall, and Mr. Swan and his party would soon be obliged to go into camp; while Matt knowing every crook and turn in the creek, could travel as well in the dark as he could by daylight. Before the sun arose, he would be miles away and among friends. If Mr. Swan took it for granted that he had gone up instead of down stream, and went that way himself in hope of being able to overtake him, it would give the squatter just so much more time in which to make good his escape. It was a very neat trick on Matt's part.
At last, after a long interval of waiting, I heard voices and footsteps on the other side of the bay. The birds having flown there was no need of caution, and some of the returning party were talking in their ordinary tones, while others were shouting back at their friends in the rear. My acute sense of hearing told me when they came out of the bushes, and I also caught the exclamations of rage and astonishment that fell from their lips when they saw what had been done in the bay during their brief absence. The guides were almost beside themselves with fury, but the two city sportsmen laughed uproariously.
"We're a pretty set, I must say," I heard one of them exclaim. "If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I never should have believed that any man living could play a trick like this upon us. Two of the best boats, all the rods, provisions and dishes, as well as the frying-pans are gone. I think we had better camp right where we are, start for home at the first peep of day and never show our faces in the woods again."
"Hallo! What's this here?" cried one of the guides, who, for want of something better to do, had stepped into the skiff and shoved out into the bay. He looked down into the clear waters as he spoke, then seized the boathook, and after a little maneuvering with it, brought one of the frying-pans to light.
"And what's that over there on the other side?" exclaimed the familiar voice of Mr. Swan.
"Why, it's my unlucky bait-rod, as sure as the world," said Arthur Hastings. "But he was lucky this time, wasn't he? If he hadn't lodged in the friendly branches of that evergreen, I should have thought that Matt Coyle had carried him off again."
These unexpected discoveries led to a thorough examination of the bay and of the bushes surrounding it, and the result was most satisfactory. Before dark every single article that Jake and Sam had thrown away, had been recovered. There was nothing missing now except the boats and the provisions; but the loss of these things did not put the party to any great inconvenience. There was an abundance of game in the woods, plenty of fish to be had for the catching, and Matt's scow could easily carry the four men who had lost their skiffs.
But little more remains to be told. Mr. Swan and his party camped "right where they were" that night, made an early start the next morning, and reached Indian Lake on the afternoon of the following day. The chums found their skiff in the best possible condition, and looking very nobby in her new dress, by which I mean a fresh coat of paint. They gave it another day in which to dry, then laid in a supply of provisions and fearlessly turned their faces toward the wilderness; while the two city sportsmen, thoroughly disgusted with their failure, and by the trick that Matt had so neatly played upon them, set out for home declaring that they would never visit Indian Lake again until their guns had been restored to them, and the man who stole them was safely lodged in jail.
During the next few days I had nothing to do but make myself miserable while the other rods caught the fish that were served up three times a day until the boys grew tired of them. I was glad when Joe said that it was time to start for home, but sorry for the disappointment he met when he got there. Uncle Joe, who was to have taken them upon an extended tour, "either East or West, they didn't know which," had suddenly been called away on important business, and the probabilities were that if they took their contemplated trip at all it would not be until near the end of the vacation; and then it would have to be a very short one. But Joe didn't get sulky, as some boys would have done under like circumstances. He wrote to his uncle, found out when he was coming home, and suggested an immediate return to Indian Lake. Arthur and Roy were delighted with the proposal, and I was at once given into the hands of a skilled mechanic, who in two days' time mended my broken joint so neatly that no one could tell, even with the closest scrutiny, that there had ever been any thing the matter with it. Joe came after me on the afternoon of the second day, and when he carried me to his room and stood me in the corner where I was to stay until something that he called "ferrule cement" had had time to harden, whom should I see but my old friend, the canvas canoe, occupying his usual place in the recess, and looking none the worse for his forced sojourn among the Indian Lake vagabonds.
"Well, I swan to man!" I exclaimed, unconsciously making use of an expression which I had heard so often that I had become quite familiar with it. "How in the name of all that's wonderful did you get back?"
"Glad to see you, old fellow," replied the canoe, in his jolly, hearty fashion, "but sorry to hear that you got crippled. Where have you been?"
"Just got back from the doctor's shop. I am all right again, or shall be in a few days. When and how did you return?"
"Came yesterday. Mr. Swan brought me. Found me hidden under a pile of brush, not more than twenty feet from the place where he and his party stood when they burned the squatter's shanty. I saw and heard every thing that happened there."
"Well, tell us all about it. I know you must have had some adventures during your absence."
"Indeed I have; and I have brought a heavy load of anxiety back with me. How I wish I could warn Joe and his chums! The threats I heard made against them were enough to make even a canvas canoe shudder."
With these preliminary remarks the canoe settled himself for an all-night's task. I have not space enough in this book to repeat what he said, and besides, the narrative of my exploits, which so far are neither many nor brilliant I confess, is ended for the time being; so I will gladly step aside and give place to my accommodating friend, who is a more experienced story-teller than myself, and who, in the second volume of this series, will describe many interesting and some exciting incidents which happened during his captivity. His story will be entitled: The Adventures of a Canvas Canoe.
The End.