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.