CHAPTER XXII. THE NIGHT ALARM.
"What did I do with my gun?" cried Giraffe, darting around this way andthat, as he tried to remember in which corner he had stacked his rifle,after coming in earlier in the night, from the bear hunt.
Already had Thad, Allan and Davy snatched up their weapons, and made abolt for the door, following the lead of Jim and Eli, and wildly excitedby the possibilities of finding that something of a tragic nature hadbeen occurring without.
Poor Bumpus, having no gun of his own, looked around in despair. Hecertainly did not want to be left behind when all this turmoil was goingon; nor was he desirous of rushing out without some sort of means ofdefending himself, in case he was set upon by enemies.
So he hastened to snatch up the same stout stick which had enabled Thadto pry loose the heavy hearthstone. And swinging this vigorously, Bumpustrotted after the other scouts, dragging his half-unfastened leggingsalong with him as he went.
It was dark outside, for the young moon had gone to rest long before. Butthen Thad, with his customary wisdom, had remembered this, and as he wentout he snatched up the only lantern they had brought along.
Bumpus could hear them all making for one point, and he followed suit.Eli and Jim had been able to locate the quarter from whence that singleshot had come, and were now heading for it.
At any rate, there had been no succeeding shots, no bombardment of thecabin. And Thad, thinking it wise to have some light on the subject,stopped for a few seconds to scratch a match, and apply the flame to thewick of the lantern, after which he again hastened on.
By that time the others had gone ahead, but his short delay served onegood turn, since it enabled poor puffing Bumpus to reach the side of thepatrol leader, which fact, no doubt, gave the fat boy considerablegratification.
"What is it, Thad?" Bumpus managed to gasp, as they hurried along.
"I don't know myself," came the reply; "but we'll soon find out now,because I hear them talking just ahead."
"And that's Sebattis, too," declared Bumpus, in a relieved tone; just asthough he may have been worrying over the possibility of the Indianhaving been injured when that gun was discharged.
"Of course it is," Thad said. "And I never thought it was any one elsebut him who fired that shot. He must have believed he saw a suspiciousfigure making up through the brush, or trying to damage our boats; thoughwhy these men should want to do that, when they're hoping for us to clearout, surprises me."
They were now close on the rest of the party; indeed, by the light whichthe lantern gave, they could make the group out, all of the others beingclustered around the Indian guide, who was talking in his usualshort-sentence way.
"Hear sound, see something move, shoot!"
That comprised the whole business with Sebattis. Where a white man wouldhave described how he was thrilled to locate the suspicious noise; andtell what his feelings were as he drew up his gun and blazed away; thePenobscot Indian simply gave the bare facts--he came, he heard, he fired.
"You don't think, now, it could have been one of those wolves we heardyelping last night, do you, Sebattis?" Giraffe ventured to ask, more todraw the other out than because he himself believed any such thing.
"Huh! when wolf speak does he swear hard?" asked Sebattis, quaintly.
"Oh! then he _must_ have been a man, because so far animals haven'tlearned how to use hard language," admitted Giraffe, doubtless chucklingat the success that had followed his little plan.
"He must have been pretty mad because you blocked his plans, to use hardwords like that," ventured Davy.
"Hurt!" declared the guide.
"He means that he thinks he wounded the fellow," explained Thad.
"Well, what else could he expect, to come nosing around our camp likethat, and even taking a sly shot at our hunters, after stealing theirnice buck?" demanded Bumpus, who could not be accused of acting as thoughhe were sleepy now.
"Where were they when you heard them first, Sebattis?" asked Thad,wishing to get all the information possible.
"Round here, mebbe. Hear talk in whisper like, and know two men come.Then fire just one shot. That all. They make off in hurry, quick!"
"Let's see if we can find their tracks," suggested Step Hen; but beforehe spoke Thad was already circling around, holding the lantern close tothe ground, and carefully looking to see if there could be found anysigns telling that the Indian had not made a mistake.
"I hope they won't think to take a pot shot at the lot of us while westand around here," said Giraffe, uneasily.
"You needn't worry," spoke up Bumpus: "a sharpshooter couldn't hit you,because you ain't wide enough to make a shadow. Think of me, and whatdreadful chances I'm taking all the time. They could get me by shootin'with their eyes shut. But all the same, you don't hear me whine. I'mready to take my medicine without showing the white feather."
"What's that over there; looks like a man kneeling down, and aimin' agun!" called out Step Hen just then; and forgetting the boast that wasstill on his lips, Bumpus threw himself on the ground, and started tocrawl behind a clump of thick bushes.
"It's only a stump, after all," announced Thad, throwing the light of hislantern in the direction of the suspicious object.
"Get up, Bumpus, the coast is clear," said Giraffe, sneeringly.
"These old leggings keep gettin' under my feet the worst kind," remarkedBumpus, complacently, as though a poor excuse might be better than none."But see there, the Indian's found something or other. Just as like asnot it's them tracks we're all lookin' for."
"Just what it is," added Davy Jones, eagerly.
As scouts who yearned to learn the many interesting things connected withwoodcraft, it can be set down as certain that Step Hen and his comradesgathered about Sebattis and Thad, then and there, convinced thatsomething was coming worth while.
"Just as Sebattis told us, there were two of them," Thad was saying,while he bent down to see the imprint of footgear at closer range.
"Seems to be something familiar about one of them tracks, Thad," remarkedGiraffe.
"Yes, our old friend, the patched shoe, has turned up again," chuckledthe patrol leader, pointing to the plain, unmistakable sign across thetoe of the impression of the shoe.
"Which of course means that Charlie is doing it again," Step Henremarked. "He wants to be in every mix-up, seems like. But if here aretwo, where is the other feller?"
"You know we decided that he must be sick or something like that," Allanpursued.
"They were coming straight at the cabin when our guard turned themaround, and sent 'em flyin'," Giraffe put in. "That looks like theywanted to see if we'd disturbed that stuff any. I guess they're gettin'rather nervous about our hangin' out here so long. It sorter interfereswith their plans, p'raps."
"Well," Allan observed, drily, "they'll see us getting out of hereto-morrow, if they keep their eyes open, which we hope will be the case.And then perhaps this Charlie Barnes and his two cronies will thinkthey're safe in entering the old cabin."
"And putting up at the woods' tavern for a time, feedin' off our nicevenison, to beat the band," grumbled Giraffe, who never could forgive thehobo outfit for depriving the scouts of that young buck.
"I wonder, now," piped up Bumpus, "if the chief means to start intracking these two men tonight? He's thrown a good scare into 'em, seems;and they're running yet, I just reckon; but he gave 'em back the shotthey fired at Thad and Eli and Davy here. That's the way we pay back ourdebts. All good scouts are supposed to settle when they owe anything,ain't they? What's Thad doing now, I wonder?"
"What do you take us for, Bumpus?" demanded Giraffe. "Don't youunderstand that Thad said he wanted us to do things with as little riskas we could? And then, to think we'd try to foller up these hard cases,holdin' a lantern, just to ask 'em to bang away at us as much as theypleased. We ain't that green. The other plan promises to work best, andyou see if Thad don't stick by it."
"Well," said
the fat boy plaintively, "How was I to know what they'dexpect to be doin'? And when you're puzzled what to think, ain't itpolicy to just hold off, and fight for wind? That's what I was adoin'when I said that. But Thad is lookin' for something again, because he'smovin' off with the lantern."
Not wishing to be left in the dark, all the others followed Thad andSebattis, both of whom seemed to be searching industriously along theground, as if they had lost something which was worth looking for.
"P'raps they got a notion one of them fellers might a dropped somethin',"suggested Step Hen, himself unable to grasp the true meaning of thestrange actions of the two ahead.
"You're closer to it than you think," was the puzzling remark of Allan;while old Eli and young Jim seemed too amused by the remark.
And while they all watched, and speculated, each according to his light,they saw Sebattis come to a pause. He called to Thad, whose back happenedto be turned at the moment; and the patrol leader hastened to join him.
Sebattis was pointing down at his feet. The boys noticed that there wassomething rather dramatic about his attitude while doing this; andGiraffe voiced the feelings of his mates when he said:
"He found what he was looking for, believe me; and what d'ye suppose itc'n be?"
The scouts pushed forward. Just as Thad was doing, so Allan, Step Hen,Davy, Giraffe, yes, and even Bumpus, as curious as the rest, craned theirnecks forward, and stared at the object in plain view beyond the tip ofthe dark finger which Sebattis had extended.
There was a plain imprint of a shoe there, though not the one that borethe mark across the sole. And there was something more than this; forwhen Thad touched what seemed to be a little dark pebble, with the pointof a stick he had picked up, they realized what it was.
A drop of blood, showing that Sebattis had made no mistake when hedeclared his random shot had at least slightly wounded one of theprowling hoboes!
The Boy Scouts on the Trail; or, Scouting through the Big Game Country Page 22
