"Whee!" gasped Lub; "then you mean to say, Phil--"
"I mean that this thing didn"t come about by accident," the other interrupted Lub to say positively; "none of us put that stuff there, and we have no kerosene to waste throwing it around. Besides, every one was sound asleep inside the shack when it happened."
"Somebody meant to burn us out, that"s it, Phil!" declared X-Ray.
"Baylay?" cried Ethan, on a hazard.
"Not on your life," X-Ray told him; "Baylay doesn"t know there are any such fellows as the Mountain Boys on earth. But there is one man who does, because he ran up against a couple of the same latterly, and had to duck. I"m referring to the eminent capitalist and financier millionaire, Mr. James Bodman."
"Whee!" breathed Lub again, as his emotions almost overpowered him; he did not venture to interrupt, but just sat there and listened with all his might to the exciting talk that was going on among his chums.
"Well," said Ethan, slowly, "from the description of that sportsman, and the way he acted when he found he couldn"t bulldoze the pair of you, I wouldn"t put a thing like this past him; but how would he know where we were camped?"
"Oh! that is easy to answer," Phil told him; "don"t you remember how we learned where they were settled by seeing smoke rising in the cold air, straight as a church pillar?"
"I reckon they could see the same if they happened to look this way,"
admitted Ethan, "because Lub uses all kinds of wood, and some of it makes a black smudge. Well, I"ll admit for the sake of argument that they could easy enough learn where our camp lay; but do you believe that stout sportsman would go to the trouble to sneak all the way over here, several miles it must be, just to try and make us some nasty mean trouble?"
"No, I don"t," replied Phil, instantly.
"Then what follows?" demanded the other, desperately.
"He knows the power of money, because he uses it right along to further some of his big schemes," Phil exclaimed.
"You mean he could bribe a couple of his guides to come over here and do the burning racket; is that what you have in mind, Phil?" asked Ethan.
"Yes, there"s no doubt of it in my mind," he was told.
"But we"d always have to just guess at it, because we could never know for sure," X-Ray went on to say, in a dubious tone that told of disappointment.
"Perhaps not," Phil remarked; "come over with me, and let"s take a look; for I"ve got a notion we can settle that thing in our minds, even if nothing might ever be done to punish the sneaks who did the job."
He picked up a burning brand from the fire that promised to serve fairly well as a torch; and with this swinging from his hand led the others to the back of the scorched shack.
"Close by we"ve all trodden things into a ma.s.s," he explained; "but let"s look further away. Here"s a place where it happens we find only a couple of inches of snow, and you can see footprints plainly marked.
Look again, and tell me if any of us made those tracks coming and going?"
"They carried the brush along here, too, Phil, because you can see little twigs lying on the surface of the snow!" announced Ethan.
"But examine the footprints, because they will tell the story," said Phil.
"Why, they are not like our tracks at all," said X-Ray, immediately.
"None of them show any sign of heels, Phil!" exclaimed Ethan; "does that mean they can be moccasins made of tough hide, and not hunting-boots like ours?"
"Now you"re getting close to the heart of it," the leader a.s.sured him; "for most of the guides up here in this region wear such foot coverings, as the Indians did before them. I believe there were two men concerned in this outrage, and that they were paid by Mr. James Bodman to come over here and burn us out."
"The coward!" muttered Lub, indignantly, as his pent-up feelings broke bounds; "why, they might have smothered us while we slept."
"Oh! I don"t suppose the millionaire believed it would be as bad as that, for I hardly think he"s got to the point where he"d commit murder outright; but he meant to give us all the bother he could. That was his way of trying to get even because we refused to knuckle down to him, and let him claim our caribou."
"Huh! guess then he"s been crazy to shoot game like that for a long time; and was a whole heap disappointed when he found it was our shots that had downed the young buck," and X-Ray chuckled as though he felt that after all the score was still decidedly in their favor.
"What surprises me, and makes me feel small," continued Phil, "is how I could sleep through it all and never know that they were creeping up, fetching that brush along with them, and piling it against the back of the shack."
"Oh! we"re all in the same boat," said Ethan, "because I was hundreds of miles away from here, and going to singing school with Sally Andrews when X-Ray let out that yawp!"
"And I own up that it was just by a lucky chance I happened to wake up,"
X-Ray Tyson admitted; "you know smoke always makes me choke, and that"s why I try to sit on the windward side of fires. It must have got in my throat as I slept, because I suddenly sat upright to get my breath.
Course I knew right away something was on the boards that ought to be attended to, and so I woke the rest up gently."
"Gently!" echoed Lub; "say, it seemed to me as if an electric current heavy enough to execute a criminal had been shot through my system. I bet you I"ve lost as much as five pounds in weight just through the nervous excitement."
"Poor chap!" said X-Ray; "it"s a pity then it doesn"t happen oftener. I think I"ll take to giving you a regular shock like that every few nights. You could drop forty pounds and be all the better for it."
"Who"s running my heft, me or you, I want to know?" demanded Lub; "it suits me just as it is. When I get a notion that I want to start to join your Living Skeleton cla.s.s I"ll give you due notice. And until that time comes please let me sleep in peace."
"Well, what can we do about this outrage?" asked Ethan.
"Nothing much," admitted Phil.
"It would be silly to think of going over and entering a complaint to that red-faced grunter," declared X-Ray; "because we"d only be insulted to our faces. Why I wouldn"t put it past him to threaten to have us kicked out of his camp, though of course James would have too much sense to try the job himself."
"We"ll have to pocket the insult, and try to guard against having it happen again, that"s all," was Phil"s conclusion. "And let me tell you we have to be thankful it turned out no worse than it did. The damage isn"t worth mentioning, and it"s opened our eyes to the fact that we have dangerous neighbors who will bear watching from this time out."
"But, Phil, we don"t mean to let them chase us away from here, do we?"
interposed Lub, who came of good Revolutionary stock, and was a sticker.
"Well, I guess not, if we have to keep on the watch every single night,"
retorted X-Ray, belligerently.
"Are we going to sit here till it"s time to get breakfast?" asked Lub, casting a solicitous glance over toward the spot where the boy was wrapped in his blanket--it would be hard to say whether Lub were concerned about the welfare of the little fellow, or coveted the warmth of the said blanket; perhaps he might have been influenced by both motives, for his heart was warm, even when he shivered with the cold breeze on his back.
"No use of that, when it"s hardly an hour after midnight right now!"
declared Phil, with a look aloft to where the star-studded sky gave him the information. "The rest of you toddle back to the shack and let me sit here a while," Ethan told them, as he gathered his blanket closer about him, after picking up his gun, as Phil noticed.
"I was just going to say the same thing myself, Ethan," remarked the leader.
"But first come, first served, that"s the rule we go by, remember, Phil."
"I"ll agree, on one condition," he was told.
"Name it then, Phil."
"There"s Jupiter away up yonder; in just about two hours he"ll be setting below the horizon. Promise to call me before he disappears from sight, will you, Ethan."
"Agreed, though I wouldn"t mind sticking out the watch till daylight,"
said the other, and his manner told that he certainly meant every word of it.