“What business have you got here? That’s what I want to know,” replied Barney, angrily. “The best thing you can do is to leave here sudden.”
“I am well satisfied of that. It is pretty cold, and I am not at all comfortable sitting here in my wet clothes. If you will tell me how to reach dry land, I shall be greatly obliged to you. But, I say, Barney!”
“Who said any thing had been goin’ on?” demanded Luke Redman, in a tone of voice which indicated considerable alarm.
And as he spoke, he cast a sidelong glance over his shoulder toward his skiff, which was stranded on the edge of the falls.
There was something so stealthy in the action that Mark’s suspicions were aroused in an instant. He followed the man’s glance, and one look was enough to clear up every thing which, but a moment before, had appeared so mysterious.
“Thar hain’t been nothin’ goin’ on here that I knows on,” repeated Mr. Redman. “I come down the bayou, same as you did, an’ got ketched in the current an’ upsot; an’ if it hadn’t been for this yere tree, I’d ’a gone over the falls, I reckon.”
“What’s that hanging to the row-lock of your skiff?” asked Mark, suddenly.
“Don’t you? Well, I do. It is a valise, and has General Mason’s name on it. I can see it as plainly as I can see you. There hasn’t been any thing going on here, eh? I know better. There are eight thousand dollars in gold in that valise, Luke Redman, and you were making off with it. That’s what’s been going on.”
Mark had hit the nail squarely on the head. Luke Redman certainly had General Mason’s valise in his skiff, and he had come down the bayou, intending to escape to the river with his booty, and cross into Louisiana; and it is probable that he would have succeeded in carrying out his plans, had it not been for the accident that compelled him to take refuge in the tree.
When the skiff was overturned, one of the handles of the valise had, by the merest accident, caught in the row-lock, and that was all that saved it from going to the bottom of the bayou.
There it hung, in plain sight, bobbing up and down in the water, as the skiff rose and fell with the waves.
A dead silence succeeded Mark’s bold announcement of the discovery he had made.
The Dragoons brought their consultation to a sudden close, and looked at Luke Redman, whose face turned pale with alarm, and then almost purple with rage.