SILAS IN LUCK AT LAST.
Dan Morgan did not have as much to say on the way home as he did while
he and his brother were passing over that same road in the morning.
Another one of his air-castles had fallen about his ears, and a portion
of the money he had hoped to earn would go into Brierly's pocket.
One of the robbers had been captured, but the other had taken himself
safely off, and that was the end of all his dreams. Did anybody ever
hear of such luck? It made him very angry to see how light-hearted Joe
seemed to be.
"I reckon you're glad 'cause I ain't got a cent to bless myself with,
ain't you?" said he, savagely. "Then, what do you keep up such a
whistling for? You can afford to be happy, when you know that you
can have a pile of money by asking for it; but I ain't a going to be
treated this here way no longer."
The young game-warden did not pay the least attention to his brother's
ravings, because he had something of more importance to think
about--his future.
He was sadly in need of such training as he could get at the Bellville
academy, and he had sense enough to know it; and the point he was
trying to decide was: Should he ask his employer to release him from
his contract, so that he could go to school during the winter? or would
it be better to make sure of the hundred and twenty dollars he could
earn during the next eight months, and look to Tom and Bob to help him
along with his studies?
While he was thinking about it, the cabin hove in sight, and at the
same time an exclamation from Dan called him back to earth again.
Joe looked up, and saw his father sitting motionless on a chair in
front of the cabin. His double-barrel lay upon the ground within easy
reach of him, his elbows were resting upon his knees, and his chin was
upheld by the palms of his hands. He appeared to be gazing steadily at
some object that was hidden from Joe's view by the corner of the house.
"How do you reckon he feels over the trick we played on him this
morning?" said Dan, with a grin. "He thinks he's a sharp one, pap does,
but he ain't got no business along of me."
"If there was any trick played upon him, you did it, and not I,"
answered Joe. "Father hasn't worked half as hard as we have, and yet he
is just as well--What in the name of wonder is that?"
While Joe was speaking, he and Dan moved around the corner of the
house, and then the object at which Silas was looking so fixedly was
disclosed to view.
It was a man who was sitting on a bench beside the door, and who was so
closely wrapped up in a clothes-line that he could scarcely stir one of
his fingers.
[Illustration: SILAS AND THE BANK ROBBER]
Hearing the sound of their footsteps, the man, whoever he was, slowly
turned his head toward the corner of the cabin, whereupon Silas
shouted out, in a savage voice:
"None of that there, I tell you! You can't get away, 'cause you're
worth a power of money to me, and I'm bound to hold fast to you
till--Human natur'!" yelled Silas, jumping to his feet, with both
barrels of his gun cocked. "Oh, it's you, is it? I kinder thought it
was t'other robber coming to turn his pardner loose."
Silas was so completely wrapped up in his own affairs that the boys
got close to him before he was aware of their presence, and it is the
greatest wonder in the world that he did not shoot one of them in his
excitement.
He was really alarmed; but when he had taken a good look at the
newcomers, in order to make sure of their identity, he laid his gun
across the chair, pushed up his sleeves, and shook both his fists at
Dan.
"So you thought you would fool your poor old pap this morning, did you,
you little snipe?" he shouted. "Well, you see what you made by it,
don't you?"
"I never tried to make a fool of you," stammered Dan, who had a faint
idea that he understood the situation. "I never in this wide world!"
"Hush your noise when I tell you I know better," yelled Silas; and one
would have thought, by the way he acted and looked, that he was very
angry, instead of very much delighted, at the way things had turned
out. "Here you have been and tramped all over them mountings, and
never got a cent for it, while I have made a clean twenty-five hundred
dollars, if I counted it up right on my fingers; and I reckon I did,
'cause your mam put in a figger to help me now and then."
"Why, how did it happen?" exclaimed Joe, who, up to this moment, had
not been able to do anything but stand still and look astonished.
He knew that his father had captured one of the robbers without help
from any one, and that was more than fifty other men had been able to
do, with all their weary tramping.
"The way it happened was just this," said Silas, who could not stand
in one place for a single moment. "Hold on there!" he added, turning
fiercely upon his prisoner, who just then moved uneasily upon the
bench, as if he were trying to find a softer spot to sit on. "I've got
my eyes onto you, and you might as--"
"Why, father, he can't get away," Joe interposed. "You've got him tied
up too tight. Why don't you let out that rope a little?"
"'Cause he's worth a pile of money--that's why!" exclaimed Silas; "and
I won't let the rope out not one inch, nuther. You, Joe, keep away from
there."
"I really wish you would undo some of this rope," said the prisoner,
who, like Byron's Corsair, seemed to be a mild-mannered man. "I have
been tied up ever since two o'clock, and am numb all over. I couldn't
run a step if I should try."
"Don't you believe a word of that!" exclaimed Silas. "Come away from
there and let that rope be, I tell you."
"Say, father," said Joe, suddenly, "what are you going to do with your
captive? Do you intend to sit up and watch him all night long?"
"I was just a studying about that when you come up and scared me,"
replied Silas, dropping the butt of his gun to the ground, and leaning
heavily upon the muzzle.
He never could stand alone for any length of time; he always wanted
something to support him.
"What do you think I had better do about it? I don't much like to keep
him here, 'cause--Why just look a here, Joey," added Silas, moving up
to the door, and pointing to some object inside the cabin. "See them
tools I took away from him?"
The boys stepped to their father's side, and saw lying upon the table,
where Silas had placed it, a belt containing a brace of heavy revolvers
and a murderous-looking knife.
"Now, them's dangerous," continued Silas, "and if this feller's pardner
should happen along--"
"But he won't happen along," interrupted Dan. "Brierly's squad gobbled
him."
The ferryman looked surprised, then disgusted, and finally he turned an
inquiring glance upon Joe, who said that Dan told the truth.
"You don't like it, do you?" said the latter to himself. "It sorter
hurts you to know that there is them in the world that are just as
lucky and smart as you be, don't it? Yes, that's what's the matter with
pap. He don't want no one else to be as well off as he is."
And when Dan said that, he hit the nail fairly on the head.
"The other robber is not in a condition to attempt a rescue," said Joe;
"but, all the same, I don't think you ought to keep this man here all
night. The sheriff is now at Mr. Warren's house, and it is your duty to
hand the prisoner over to him at once. Be careful how you point those
guns this way."
This last remark was called forth by an action on the part of Silas and
Dan that made Joe feel the least bit uncomfortable.
While the latter was talking, his hands were busy with the rope; and
when the prisoner arose from the bench and stamped his feet to set the
blood in circulation again, his excited and watchful guards at once
covered his head and Joe's with the muzzles of their guns.
"Turn those weapons the other way," repeated Joe, angrily. "You don't
think this man is foolish enough to try to run off while his hands are
tied, do you? Now, father, how did you happen to catch him?"
"It was just as easy as falling off a log," replied Silas, resuming his
seat and resting his double-barrel across his knees. "When you and Dan
went away this morning, I just naturally shouldered my gun, walked up
the road to the foot of the mounting, and set down on a log to wait for
game to come a running past me, just the same as if I was watching for
deer, you know."
This was all true; but there was one thing he did that he forgot to
mention. The only "game" Silas expected to see was Dan Morgan, when he
returned from the mountain at night, and the ferryman was prepared to
give him a warm reception. Before he devoted himself to the task of
holding down that log by the roadside, he took the trouble to cut a
long hickory switch, and to place it beside the log, out of sight. He
meant to give Dan such a thrashing that he would never play any more
tricks upon him.
"Well, about one o'clock, or a little after, while I was a setting
there and waiting for the game to come along, I heared a noise in the
brush, and, all on a sudden, out popped this feller. He was running
like he'd been sent for, and that's why I suspicioned him. Of course
I didn't know him from Adam, but I asked him would he stop a bit. And
he 'lowed he would, when he seed my gun looking him square in the eye.
I brung him home, and your mam she passed out the clothes-line, and I
tied him up."
"Where is mother now?" asked Joe.
"Gone off after more sewing, I reckon," replied Silas, in a tone which
seemed to say that it was a matter that was not worth talking about.
"She helped me figger up what I would get for catching him, and then
she dug out. I'm worth almost as much as you be now, Joey, and that
there mean Dan, who wouldn't stay by and help me, he ain't got a cent.
Now, don't you wish you hadn't played that trick on me this morning."
"Never mind that," interposed Joe, who did not care to stand by and
listen to an angry altercation which might end in a fight or a
foot-race between his father and Dan. "If we are going to deliver this
man to the sheriff to-night, we had better be moving."
"Do you reckon the sheriff will hand over the twenty-five hundred when
I give up the prisoner?" inquired Silas, as the party walked down the
bank toward the flat.
"Of course he won't."
"What for won't he?"
"Because he hasn't got it with him. Perhaps it was never put into his
hands at all. I haven't received my share yet."
"Then I reckon I'd best hold fast to him till I'm sure of my money,"
said Silas, reflectively. "I guess I won't take him down to old man
Warren's to-night."
"I guess you will, unless you want to get into trouble with the law,"
said Joe, decidedly. "If you don't give him up of your own free will,
the sheriff will take him away from you."
Silas protested that he couldn't see any sense in such a law as that,
but he lent his aid in pushing off the flat.
Dan, who was almost too angry to breathe, had more than half a mind
to stay at home; but his curiosity to hear and see all that was said
and done when the prisoner was turned over to the officers of the law
impelled him to think better of it. When the flat was shoved off, he
jumped in and picked up one of the oars.