WHAT HAPPENED ON THE SECOND NIGHT.
"Owen, Owen, wake up!"
When Bandy-legs dug his elbow into the side of his sleeping chum, and
whispered these words in his ear, naturally enough the said Owen could
not help but awaken.
"What ails you?" he asked sleepily; and even Steve stirred as though the
sound of their voices had aroused him.
"My trap's sprung!" was the rather surprising information Bandy-legs
vouchsafed in return.
"The dickens you say!" exclaimed Owen, suddenly sitting up in the
darkness. "Now, how d'ye know that fact? Did anything give a yelp?"
"No," continued the other, eagerly; "but you see, Owen, before I went to
sleep I had Max tie a string to my leg and the other end to that loop.
It was fixed under the root of a tree; and if the trap went off, why,
don't you see, the string'd give me just a sweet little yank, like it
wanted to tell me to come around and take my game out."
"And did you feel that same yank?" demanded Steve, sitting up suddenly.
"Right now, before I woke Owen up. Oh, it was a sure enough jerk, all
right! What'll we do about it?" demanded Bandy-legs.
"Let's crawl out and see what happened," remarked Owen, setting his
actions to correspond with his words, and being followed by his two
companions.
"What is it?"
That was Max speaking, and they could see his head poked out from the
partly open flap of the smaller tent. Evidently he must have been awake
at the time, or else the sound of murmuring voices aroused him; for Max
always declared that he was a very light sleeper.
"Bandy-legs here says his trap is sprung," remarked Owen. "He tells us
you fixed a string to his leg and the other end to the loop. Well, that
just gave him word something had happened."
"We'll soon find out," was all Max remarked, as he proceeded to crawl
all the way out of his tent.
Stepping over he picked up the lantern, and a match that had been left
handily near by. And so it took but a fraction of a minute for them to
possess a light that would answer all purposes.
The four of them then approached the place where Bandy-legs had set his
wonderful snare, which he had tested so well himself to start with.
"Huh! I don't see anybody swinging around here!" remarked the always
skeptical Steve.
"Neither do I," added Owen, in a tone of disappointment.
"But see, fellers, the old trap, she's gone off!" exclaimed Bandy-legs,
in a thrilling tone. "Didn't I tell you I felt a pull that woke me up?
It worked, just you bet it did, now."
The hickory sapling was indeed standing up almost straight, with the
loop dangling part way down; but the snare was devoid of any victim.
Max looked around as best he could with such a poor light.
"I don't see the first sign of any tracks here," he remarked.
"Shucks, the chances are Bandy-legs might have kicked in the night, and
that was enough to set the loop free!" Steve declared.
"He couldn't do that," answered Max; "I fixed that string in such a way
there was no danger of it happening. But I rather think some fox in
hunting around set the thing off, but didn't get caught in the spread
loop. It was set for bigger game, you remember, boys."
"Well, I'm going back to my blanket again," said Owen. "It feels chilly
out here, and there's no use staying."
Even Bandy-legs seemed to have lost all faith in his wonderful snare;
for he declined to stay long enough to put it in working order again.
Twice now it had gone off, and there could be no telling what the third
result might be if he ventured to try it again, which he would not.
There was no further alarm, and at dawn the boys came piling out of
their tents. The weather seemed to have grown a bit sultry, so Max
remarked that perhaps a dip in the water of the Big Sunflower might not
feel out of the way.
So they had a happy little time of it, splashing each other, and
carrying on as any five carefree lads might be expected to; until all of
them decided they had had enough, when dressing was the next thing on
the programme.
Bandy-legs was the first to finish. The fire was burning briskly, and a
nice red bed of embers between the side stones invited the attention of
the cook of the morning, namely himself.
"Say, where'd you hang that half of a ham, Owen?" he asked, after what
seemed a vain search.
"Just where we always kept it," was the reply; "suspended from that limb
of the oak over--well, did anybody change it around or take it inside
the tent?" and Owen looked his surprise, when the others all shook their
heads in the negative.
"It's gone!" cried Bandy-legs, looking very unhappy; "our nice ham's
been hooked!"
A rush was made for the oak tree in question.
"There's the twine I hung it up by, dangling from the limb right now,"
declared Owen, pointing.
"But show me the ham, will you?" asked Bandy-legs. "We can't make a
decent breakfast off string that's only got a ham flavor, can we?"
"Why, it must have been full six feet up from the ground," remarked
Steve, for the benefit of Bandy-legs; "I never thought before a panther
could leap _that_ high!"
"Oh, gracious!" began Bandy-legs; and then, seeing the look on Steve's
face, he understood that the other was only baiting him for a fall:
whereupon he shut his jaws hard together, and determined not to be taken
in.
Max, of course, was already looking for signs. It was his opinion that
few things could happen without there being evident traces left behind,
if only one knew how to find them.
"Here's a track, fellows; and it looks like the same we saw before!" he
called out, presently, as he bent over eagerly.
"It sure does," admitted Owen.
"Right under where our lovely ham hung, too," wailed Bandy-legs.
"All he had to do was to reach up and grab it," commented Owen.
Toby did not say anything, but went through a pantomime movement as of a
man taking possession of some object dangling there from the limb.
"I wish now we'd taken it in our tent, when Max complained that the ham
smell made it unpleasant in his own," Bandy-legs went on.
"There was a man once who actually locked the door of his stable after
his horse was took," Steve ventured; at which Max laughed.
"Well, it does look like we'd have to go without ham for a while, boys;
but after all, it was only a half. Think how bad we'd feel if it was a
whole one. And whoever took it must have been pretty hungry in the
bargain. He's been living on partridges right along, when he could find
any in his snares. The rest of the time he went without a bite, seems
like."
"But, Max, who is he?" asked Steve; at which the other shrugged his
shoulders.
"Ask me something easy, boys," he replied. "I've never seen him even
once, like Herb and his chums did, when they tried to sleep in that
queer old cabin. But you see, we've got his footprints right here in the
dirt. They ought to tell us something, perhaps."
"But, Max, footprints can't talk, can they?" demanded Bandy-legs,
"Always, in their own language," was the ready reply. "You have to study
that a while though, before you can understand what they say."
"Oh, yes, I'm on to you now, Max," cried the other, triumphantly; "you
mean that you can tell it was a man by the size of the prints; ain't
that it?"
"One of many things," answered Max. "Now, this seems to have been a
pretty hefty sort of fellow, because the marks are big. It is a common
shoe, too, just like the men make and wear in the prisons and public
institutions."
Bandy-legs fairly gasped for breath at hearing this remark. To his mind
it seemed to imply that the mysterious dweller of the strange cabin on
Catamount Island must be an escaped convict, a desperate ruffian, who
might take a notion to murder them all in their sleep.
"And we've still got five more nights to stay here!" he groaned, as
though with that new intelligence the very last hope he was cherishing
of ever being able to see his folks again vanished like a puff of smoke
in the wind.
"Say, that makes me think of something," Steve broke out just then.
"About what?" asked Max, turning from his examination of the plain
footprint at the place where the unknown visitor had stood when reaching
up for the tempting half of a smoked ham.
"Those two men," the other went on to say.
"What about 'em?" asked Owen.
"I said they wore gray homespun clothes, didn't I, just like the
farmers, plenty of 'em, have around these diggings? Well, I've changed
my mind, boys. It just broke in on me that I saw somethin' flash every
time they moved this way and that. No, it wasn't the field glasses
either; but somethin' about their clothes. Brass buttons, I reckon,
boys! Them men might 'a' been wardens from the penitentiary, lookin' for
a prisoner that escaped some time ago!"
Steve drew himself up proudly, as though conscious of the fact that he
had hit upon a very plausible explanation of the mystery. Max was
evidently thinking it over, for his face seemed serious enough, to be
sure.
"That doesn't sound so much out of the way, Steve," he admitted. "Fact
is, it may be the very thing. Some of these guards have gray uniforms, I
believe; and they put brass buttons on the same, just to make them look
official-like. Yes, they wanted to get over here, and didn't have a
boat. Perhaps they've gone up river to get one, and cross to the island.
They might try it to-day; and then again perhaps they'd wait for another
night, for fear of frightening him away, and losing him somehow if he
jumped into the river."
"What a peck of trouble we've sure struck since we took on that dare,"
Owen remarked, just then.
"Yes," added Bandy-legs, with a sad look, "and the end ain't come along
yet, by a big sight."
Of course they had plenty of other things to supply the lack of ham for
breakfast. Max even went to the trouble of making some flapjacks, just
to take away the bitter disappointment Bandy-legs seemed to feel over
the disappearance of the joint. And all of them united in declaring that
they did not care how soon he had the same notion again, the cakes were
so fine.
The day was very warm, and having been reminded that the Big Sunflower
River was capable of assuming the dimensions of a flood upon certain
occasions, nervous Bandy-legs turned one eye upward from time to time,
as though trying to figure out whether they might expect a cloudburst of
some sort, should a storm drop in upon them.
Steve joked him more than a little about his new fears.
"Got your tree all picked out, have you, Bandy-legs?" he would remark in
his bantering way. "Be sure and tie your canoe to the lower limb, so
it'll stay by you. And feel a little pity, won't you, please, for the
other poor fellers who go ridin' down the raging flood, hangin' on to
the bottom of their boats? Oh, it's a wise guy you show yourself, old
boy. They don't ketch you asleep, do they? Weasels ain't in it with
Bandy-legs, boys. You see from the way he looks at that oak yonder,
that's his choice, when she comes bowling along here."
Max had some little scheme of his own on his mind. He did not even take
his cousin into his confidence; but along after lunch he picked up the
gun, and, remarking that he might go for a little walk along the shore,
left them wondering.
They knew Max well enough to feel pretty certain he must have something
"hatching," as Steve put it; and all sorts of guesses were indulged in
during his absence.
Although the four boys left in camp amused themselves in a variety of
ways, even fishing with fair success, as Steve had done on the preceding
day, time hung heavy on their hands that afternoon. It seemed as though
the sun would never draw near the line of far-away hills that marked the
western horizon.
More than a few times Owen would look up, as some slight sound caught
his ear. He was listening for the report of the gun Max carried; but as
the minutes turned into hours, and nothing was heard, Owen began to grow
anxious.
He had almost reached the point of proposing that they give a halloo,
and if no reply came, start out to look for the absent chum, when a
moving figure up the shore caught his attention, and presently it
developed into Max.
"See anything of the convict?" asked Steve, upon whom that idea seemed
to have taken a decided hold.
Max shook his head in the negative.
"Have you been up to that cabin again?" asked Owen, suspiciously.
"I suppose I might as well tell you that I've laid a little plan that,
if it only turns out well, may bag the unknown visitor we had last
night," Max confessed. "You see, when we were up there the other day, I
noticed that old as it was, the cabin was as strong as anything. If a
fellow could only slip up, and shoot a bar across the door in any way
after _some one_ went inside, it'd be dollars to doughnuts he'd find the
chap there in the morning."
"And when would you do all this fine slipping-up business?" asked Steve.
"I'm going there again to-night," Max continued, positively; "and lie
around to see what happens. And none of you need say a single word,
because you don't come along with me. When I've managed to secure that
door as I've arranged for, it'll be time enough to let you know about
it. Forget it now, boys; and let's talk about supper."
Bandy-legs stared hard at Max, as though he could not believe his ears.
That anyone would dare venture all the way up to that strange cabin in
the darkness of the night, and even try and capture the desperate
ruffian whom they now believed to be an escaped convict, amazed him.
Sure enough, that night, about the time the boys under ordinary
conditions would be thinking of seeking their blankets, Max quietly took
his gun and vanished from the sight of his chums.
He had taken particular note of every step of the route along the bank
with this night journey in view. And he felt now that he could silently
make his way along without anything bordering upon an accident. Had any
of the others been with him a clumsy mis-step was apt to create trouble;
and Bandy-legs in particular was always getting into a mess.
Max had reached a point about halfway up the shore of Catamount Island
when he suddenly stopped short and crouched low. Surely that was the low
sound of voices coming to his ear. And he immediately recognized the
fact that the murmur must be carried across the water, which is such a
splendid conveyer of sounds.
Then some persons must be coming off from the shore in a boat! His mind
went back to what Steve had seen of the two men in gray uniforms. Were
they about to land on the island now, bent upon recapturing the
desperate man who was hiding there.
Max had just about come to this decision when he had occasion to alter
his views of the matter. He heard a peculiar little cough, which struck
him as mighty familiar. Their old enemy, Ted Shafter, had an odd way of
making such a sound; and there were those who said it was caused by
smoking so many cigarettes. Did this cigarette cough mean that Ted and
his two cronies were coming to play a practical joke on the campers of
Catamount Island?