Filling the boots with sand he swung them back and forth, meaning to
toss them as far out into the river as he could. Just as he was about
quitting his hold of them, a terrifying thought seized him. The
sand-filled boots would make a good deal of noise in striking the
water, and Sam on the bank above would be sure to hear. Jake was ready
enough to injure Sam, but he was not by any means ready to encounter
that particularly cool and determined youth, while engaged in the act
of doing him a surreptitious injury. He must go higher up the stream
before putting his purpose into execution.

The bank at this point was crowned with a great pile of drift wood,
the accumulation of many floods, which had been caught and held in its
place by two great trees from the roots of which the water had
gradually washed the sand away until the trees themselves stood up
upon great root legs, fifteen feet long. The trees and the drift pile
were the same in which Sam Hardwicke had hidden his little party a
year before, when the fortunes of Indian war had thrown him, with Tom
and his sister, and the black boy Joe, upon their own resources in the
Indian haunted forest. The story is told in a former volume of this
series.[1] Sam's resting place just now was within a few feet of
the great tree roots, but Sam was not sleeping there, as Jake Elliott
supposed. He had been wide enough awake, ever since Jake first
startled him out of sleep, and he had silently observed that worthy's
manoeuvres through the bushes. Jake crept along the edge of the
drift pile to its further end, intending to toss the boots into the
river as soon as he should be sufficiently far from Sam for safety. As
he went, however, his awakened caution grew upon him. He reflected
that Sam would suspect him when he should miss his boots the next
morning, and might see fit to call him to account for their absence.