DAVE DARRIN IS ANGRY
"Keep on calling, Dave!" shouted Dick, as they ran toward the
sound of the voice.
"This way!" answered Darry, his voice sounding louder as they
neared him.
"What's up?" Tom asked as they ran.
Dave's voice sounded in wrathful explosion.
"Eh?" Tom pressed him.
"Wait until you get here, and you'll see," retorted Dave.
"You're not hurt?" Dick shouted.
"No; but my feelings are!" vented Darrin indignantly.
Another minute and the trio headed by Dick, reached the spot.
By this time darkness was coming on through the woods. Prescott,
who was in the lead, at first received the impression that Dave
was standing beside a tree. And so Dave was, though the reason
for his standing there was yet to be explained.
A moment more and Tom and Dick had reached the spot where the
wrathful Darrin was standing.
"Well, of all the-----" began Tom wonderingly.
"Outrages!" finished Darry angrily.
Prescott laughed outright.
"I suppose I must be a comical-looking object," admitted Dave
Darrin ruefully. "But just wait until I lay my hands on the rascal
who played this trick on me! Oh, I'll make him ache for his
smartness."
Though Darrin had an unusually quick temper, he generally had
it under excellent control. Now, however, he was so indignant
that he fairly sputtered, and the humorous side of the situation
did not appeal to him.
What Dick saw was that Dave stood with his back to the trunk of
the tree. Around Darry's neck a noose was fast. Back of the
prisoner the rope had been wrapped once around the trunk of the
tree. Next, several folds of rope had been passed both around
Darrin and the tree trunk in such fashion that the boy's arms
were pinioned fast to his sides. In addition, a single turn of
rope had been taken around each arm. Finally, the rope had been
knotted several times at the opposite side of the tree from that
on which Darrin stood.
"You must have stood pretty patiently for anyone to be able to
tie you up in that artistic fashion!" blurted Tom Reade.
"Patient? Patient nothing!" growled Darry between his teeth.
"I was so angry all the time that I couldn't keep from sputtering,
but that rascal had me fast, and kept making me more secure."
"How old a man was he?" asked Dick.
"I don't know whether he was a man or a boy."
"Is your eyesight failing, Dave?" asked Tom.
"I haven't eyes in the back of my head," snapped Darry. "Say,
aren't you fellows going to hurry up and free me?"
"Can't you free yourself?" suggested Reade.
"If I could have done that I'd now be ranging these woods in search
of the perpetrator of this outrage," Darry declared. "Hurry up
and untie me!"
"We will, but please be patient for a moment or two longer," begged
young Prescott. "This is such a cleverly artistic job that I
want to study out just how it was done. How did the fellow attack
you?"
"From behind," muttered Darry.
"But how?"
"Wait, and I'll tell you," Dave went on, forcing himself to talk
a trifle more calmly. "When I'm free I'll show you the spot over
there, in the thicket between the two clumps of bushes. Well,
I had gotten this far when I saw the missing steaks. They rested
on a tin pan on the ground in the thicket. It looked as though
the thief of our supper had gone away to get water or something.
I had just stepped, on tiptoe, of course, past this tree when
I heard a soft step behind me. Before I could turn, the noose
was dropped over my head, and then down on my neck. It was jerked
tight, like a flash, and I was pulled against this tree. The
fellow took some kind of hitch around the trunk of the tree to
hold me-----"
"Yes; I see the hitch," assented Dick. "It was well done."
"So well done that it held me, for a moment," Dave went on. "The
noose choked me, for a brief space, so that I didn't have much
presence of mind. Before I recovered myself, the fellow had passed
the rope several times around my body and arms, and had taken
the extra loops on my arms. By that time I was so helpless that
I couldn't stir to free myself."
"And you didn't see the fellow?" asked Dick.
"Not a glimpse of him. He worked from behind, and did his trick
like lightning."
"But there are no steaks, nor any plate, on the ground in the
thicket now," Reade reported, after looking.
"No," Darry grunted. "The fellow who tried me up like this passed
over my eyes a dirty cloth that perhaps he would call a handkerchief.
Then I heard him over by the thicket. Next he was back here
and had whisked that cloth away from my eyes. That was the last
I heard of him."
"Why didn't you set up a roar as soon as he attacked you?" demanded
Tom Reade.
"The noose bound my throat so tightly, I couldn't," Darry explained.
"I was seeing stars, and I was dizzy. After he had taken a few
hitches of the rope around me he eased up on the noose a bit."
"Did you 'holler' then?" questioned Dick.
"No," Dave Darrin admitted honestly. "I used up all my breath
telling that unknown, unseen fellow just what I thought of him."
"If you want to know what I think of the fellow," uttered young
Prescott, "it seems to me that the unknown chap is clever and
bright enough to be capable of better things than stealing supper
from other people. This tie-up is about the most ingenious thing
I've seen in a long time."
"Maybe I'd appreciate it more," retorted Darry, "if I could see
it as you do, on another fellow. Are you going to hurry up and
cut away this rope?"
"Not if you are able to wait calmly while I untie it," Dick answered.
"It's surely a good piece of rope. It will go part way toward
paying for the steaks."
With that Prescott began to untie the knots. When his fingers
ached from this from of exercise, Greg took his place. Meanwhile,
Tom Reade explored the thicket where Dave had seen the plate of
steaks. There was no sign of the food taken from the camp. This
Tom made out by the aid of lighted matches, as the long shadows
were now falling in the woods.
"I'm glad, now, that you didn't cut the rope," said Dave, as at
last he stepped free. "We'll save his rope, for I hope to find
that fellow again."
"What will you do to him if you catch him?" grinned Reade.
"Maybe I'll need the rope to lynch him with," uttered Darry grimly.
Tom threw back his head, laughing heartily.
"Our dear, savage, blood-thirsty old Darry!" Reade laughed. "You
talk as vindictively as a pirate, but if you found your enemy
hurt you'd drop everything else and nurse him back into condition.
Darry, you know you would!"
"Let's get back to camp," urged Greg. "Supper is ready, but no
one has had any yet. My stomach feels like an empty balloon."
"All right, then," agreed Darrin gruffly, "though I'd sooner catch
that fellow than eat."
"That word, 'eat,' sounds like a poem!" sighed Greg, tightening
his belt as the quartette turned campward.
"So you didn't get a single glimpse of your---your annoyer?" asked
Prescott.
"Not what you could call a glimpse," Darrin responded. "Two or
three times I caught sight of the fellow's shirt sleeves as he
passed the rope around me. His shirt sleeves were of a light
tan color, so I suppose that is the color of his entire shirt.
That, however, is the sole clue I have to the scoundrel's description."
"I'd like to meet the fellow," mused Dick.
"Maybe you'll have that pleasure," hinted Darry with the nearest
approach to a smile he had yet shown.
"You mean you'd like to see me tied up in the same fashion, and
then discover whether I could keep my temper under such circumstances?"
laughed young Prescott.
"Never mind what I mean," Dave retorted.
They were soon in camp, now, after calling to Dan and Harry two
or three times in order to locate their way. At last, however,
they came in sight of the glowing embers of fire and the rays of
the two lanterns that Dan had lighted and hung up.
"I smell something that smells mighty good," sniffed Dave. "Did
any of you fellows recover the steaks? Have you been keeping
something back from me?"
"I don't believe you'll find the steaks in camp," Dick retorted,
"but you'll find something that will taste fully as good."
With that the quartette charged into camp. Everything was ready
for the table by the time each fellow had washed his hands and
face in the one tin basin that served the camp.
"Put one of those lanterns on the table, Dan," called Dick, as
he finished drying himself on a towel. "Another night, if we
eat after dark, we'll try to have a campfire that'll light the
place up like an electric light."
"Another night, unless some of our neighbors move," predicted
Darry, "we won't have food enough left to make it worth while
to try to have supper!"
The boys sat down in great good humor, even Dave softening when
he saw the bountiful supper that had been prepared. Not one
of them felt nervous about the possible nearness of the late prowler.
The boys were six to one, whoever the prowler might be. Besides,
this mysterious stranger seemed to prefer humor to violence.
Yet, all the time they were eating and chattering---and Dick did
his full share of both that young man, Prescott, was also busily
thinking up plans by means of which he hoped to be able to gain
a closer view of the recent prowler.
Of these plans he said no word to his chums, for there was more
than a chance that the human mystery of the woods was even then
within earshot, off under the shadows among the trees.