Page:Castlemon--Joe Wayring at Home.djvu/185

 with. We ain't got a bite of meat in the house, an' I was after that there b'ar when you fellers come up an' skeared him away. So thinks I to myself, I'll jest go down to the pond where their boats is, an' I'll take the best one of 'em an' cl'ar out afore they gets back. Then I'd have somethin' to do with."

"Where would you go?"

"Up to Injun Lake. I'm the bulliest kind of a guide fur that neck of the woods, an' so's my two boys; but you see we ain't got no boats, an' we're too poor to buy 'em."

"Why don't you go to the hotels and hire out to them?" demanded Tom; and then he wondered if there were a landlord in the world who would trust a boat-load of passengers, ladies and children for instance, to the care of the walking whisky barrel he saw before him.

"Didn't I try that very thing down there"—another backward jerk of the head—"an' didn't they tell me that they didn't have no use fur sich lookin' fellers as me an' my boys was?" exclaimed Matt Coyle, fiercely. "They did fur a fact. But if I had a boat of my own I could go up to Injun Lake where they ain't so