A SURPRISE AT THE CABIN
Will got to the weapon first.
With an exclamation of rage and anger, Antoine drew his hunting
knife from its sheath and lifted it threateningly.
"Keep back!" he said. "Keep back, every one of you!"
"Throw down the knife, then!" Tommy demanded.
Instead of throwing down the knife, Antoine seemed preparing for a
spring. It was evident that he had not yet abandoned the hope of
gaining his revolver. The weapon which Will had seized left his
hand with a swift whirl, and the next moment the knife crashed from
Antoine's hand to the floor. The fellow's wrist had been broken.
He fell back with a groan, but remained inactive only a second.
"I'll come back!" he shouted, and disappeared through the entrance.
Tommy followed him out after having secured Will's automatic, but
he was nowhere in sight on the slope. The tracks in the deep snow
showed that he had turned in the direction of the cavern which the
boys had known to their cost that morning.
"He's gone after our revolvers!" shouted Tommy.
"I'm afraid that's right," Sandy answered, sticking his head
cautiously out of the opening. "He's the man who hid them,
probably!"
"He'll be back directly," Will prophesied, "so one of you would
better remain on guard at the door. If he catches us all inside,
we'll be in the same fix we were when he found us!"
"I'd rather fight bears than a snake like that!" declared Sandy.
A faint voice was now heard calling from some unseen recess.
"Tommy, Sandy, Will!" George's voice called.
Leaving Tommy at the door, the three boys passed around the chamber
pounding on the walls with little rocks and listening eagerly for
further words. At last they came to where a bear skin hung against
a crevice. They drew it abide and saw George looking up at them.
"Vot iss?" asked Sandy with a grin.
"So you heard me in time!"
The boy's speech was low and indistinct.
"If we hadn't, we wouldn't be here," answered Sandy.
"That Beaver call sounded good to us, too!" Will observed.
"What about the tea being drugged?" asked Sandy.
"It put me to sleep in a minute!" declared George. "My head
whirled for a second, and then I was out for the count."
"I guess he thought he had you laid away for a good long time,"
suggested Sandy.
"I reckon I woke up too soon for him," George answered with a faint
smile. "I heard you boys talking, though you seemed a long way
off, and at first I thought it was all a dream."
"We got a feed in that dream, anyway!" laughed Sandy.
"I tried to cry out but couldn't," George continued. "My lips
seemed frozen into numbness. I couldn't move hand or foot for a
time, but finally I managed to clap the palms of my hands together
in the Beaver call, and that seemed to set the blood circulating
through my veins."
"What do you make of it?" asked Sandy.
"If you leave it to me," whispered George, still faint from loss of
blood and the effects of the drug, "I dope it out that this man who
calls himself Antoine is in possession of the Little Brass God, and
he has in some way discovered that we are here after it."
"That's a fact!" exclaimed Will, "you saw the Little Brass God,
too, didn't you?"
"I certainly did!" was the reply.
"Well, was the man who sat before the fire, the same man who gave
you the drug?" Will went on. "Did you see him plainly?"
"I've been wondering about that," George replied. "Sometimes I
think Antoine is the man who sat before the fire with the ugly
Little Brass God leering down at him. Sometimes, I think it was
Pierre who sat there. I can't quite make up my mind."
"If it was Pierre," Will said gravely, "the Little Brass God will
probably never be found! The man who gave you the drugged drink
shot the half-breed to death this morning."
"Then I hope it wasn't Pierre who sat by the fire," Sandy declared.
"We've come a long way after that Little Brass God, and got into
many a mix-up over it, so we've just got to take it back to Chicago
with us!"
"Now look here," Will reasoned, "this Antoine had some motive in
putting us boys to sleep! We don't know what that motive was, but
I think I'm giving a pretty good guess when I say that he wanted to
prevent our interfering with the Little Brass God until he had
arranged to make anything we might do in that line absolutely
worthless."
"That listens good to me, too," declared Sandy. "The man wouldn't
try to drug us unless he had some strong motive for doing so!"
"We're all together once more, anyhow!" Will observed, "and I think
we'd better stay together. I never did like this idea of one boy
sneaking away in the night and leaving the others to guess where he
went to. It isn't safe to go wandering off alone in that way!"
"Yes, I'd talk about that if I were you!" laughed Sandy. "You go
wandering off by yourself more than any of the bunch!"
"I think it's a good thing for you boys that I went wandering off
alone this morning," Will argued.
"You didn't go wandering off alone!" Thede cut in. "You had Pierre
with you? Poor Pierre!" he continued. "I'm sorry for him! I
suppose we'll have to make some kind of a grave and give him decent
burial!"
"Sure, we'll do that!" agreed Will. "But what is puzzling me just
now is this," the boy went on, "how are we going to get out of this
hole with that Antoine watching our every move? He'll shoot us
down just as quick as he shot Pierre if he gets a chance."
The boys took short trips out of the cavern in quest of their
enemy, but were unable to discover any traces of him other than the
tracks in the snow. These led toward the chain of caverns which
the boys had such good reason to remember.
"I think we'd better make for the camp," Will suggested in a moment.
"Why not move over to the cabin?" asked Thede. "It will be much
more comfortable there."
"That's a good idea, too," Will agreed, "except that we'd have to
move all our camp equipage and provisions."
"Well, why not?" asked the boy. "We can rig up a drag and draw the
stuff over in two or three loads."
"We can if Antoine isn't shooting at us every minute!" Sandy cut in.
"I don't believe Antoine will trouble us," Thede answered. "If he
has the Little Brass God, he'll probably make off with it. He's
got to go somewhere to get his injured wrist tended to, and my
opinion is that he'll simply disappear from this neck of the woods
until he makes up his mind that we have gone back to Chicago."
"I hope he won't go very far," Will mused.
"If he does, we'll lose the Little Brass God!" Sandy argued.
"I don't agree with Thede," Will said directly. "If the man has a
secure hiding place in the hills, he'll manage to treat the injured
wrist himself and remain hidden until he thinks we have left the
country."
"It's all a guess, anyway," Sandy exclaimed, "and, whatever takes
place, I vote for moving our truck over to the cabin and settling
down there! We don't want to go back to Chicago as soon as we find
the Little Brass God, do we?"
"We certainly do not!" shouted Tommy, sticking his head into the
narrow doorway. "I haven't had a chance to catch all the fish I
want yet!"
"Well, we may as well move over to the cabin if that's the general
opinion," agreed Will. "I must admit that those tents look pretty
thin to me. I didn't expect snow to fall so early."
"Besides," Sandy urged, "if we live in the cabin, we'll be
perfectly safe from attack. It would take dynamite to make a hole
through those great logs, and the door itself is about a foot
thick!"
"All right," Will replied. "If we find anything left when we get
back to our camping place, we'll move it over to the cabin!"
"The first thing to move will be George," laughed Sandy.
"Oh, I can walk all right!" the invalid declared.
"Through this thick snow? I should say not! We've got to make up
some kind of a sled and give you the first sleigh-ride of the
season!"
"And while we're about it, we can make a sled that we can move the
tents and provisions on," suggested Will.
The boys had little to make a sled with, but they finally managed
to bind saplings together with such cord as they had in their
possession, and so manufacture a "drag" upon which the wounded boy
could be carried back to camp. The lads were strongly tempted to
help themselves to Antoine's provisions before they left, but they
finally decided not to do so, especially as they believed that they
had plenty of their own.
"He'll need them all before he gets rid of that sore wrist," Sandy
laughed. "He won't be in shape to do much hunting!"
"Now," Thede observed, after wrapping George up in one of the bear
robes taken from the wall of the cavern, "I've been thinking that
the cabin is a great deal nearer the camp. Of course I haven't
been to the camp, but I've heard the location described and I'm
positive that it is four or five miles further away from us than
the cabin."
"So you want to take George directly to the cabin, do you?" asked
Tommy, who still considered himself on guard and kept a constant
lookout for Antoine. "I don't see why we shouldn't do so," he
added.
"It isn't far out of the way," urged Thede.
"Then here we go to it!" laughed Tommy. "I'll chase on ahead and
have a roaring fire built there before you get half way to it!"
"Oh, you will?" grinned Thede. "I'd like to know how you're going
to find it! George and I are the only ones in this party who can
find the mysterious cabin in the bog!"
"Well, then," Tommy admitted, "perhaps you'd better run on ahead
and find it, while we come along with the kid!"
It was a long and painful journey to the cabin, but it was finished
at last. When the boys came to the edge of the swamp, however,
they saw a great column of smoke rising from the chimney on the
roof.
"Now do you suppose Antoine beat us to it?" asked Thede.