THE MYSTERIOUS HAM THROWER
"Where am I? Oh! what was that fell alongside me? Who's throwing stones?
Hello! Max, Toby, Bandy-legs, where are you all at?"
Steve had found his tongue apparently, and was shouting all this at the
top of his voice. Max thought it high time he showed himself, so as to
quiet the excitable chum.
"All right, Steve; I'm here at your elbow, you see," he remarked,
stepping out into plainer view. "You've only been up to your old tricks
again, and walking in your sleep. I think you must have had a bad case
of thirst, for you started straight for the spring, and you see you
nearly got there."
"You don't say?" ejaculated Steve, looking down in some dismay at his
bare feet, and his now shivering figure, clad only in thin pajamas. "But
what happened, Max? Sure that was a terrible screech that woke me up;
and I tell you I heard some heavy thing bump on the ground close by me!"
"So did I, Steve," added the other; "let's look and see."
Five seconds later and Max gave utterance to a bubbling cry.
"Great Caesar!" exclaimed Steve, staring at the object the other bent
over and picked up; "this is the funniest thing that ever happened to
me, Max. Why, if it ain't raining _hams_ up here in the woods! Some
farmer's smoke-house must have blown up, and we get the benefit."
"Wait a little, Steve," said Max, solemnly; "take another look, will
you? Perhaps you'll notice that this is only half a ham."
"Why, so it is, Max."
"Look closer, and tell me if you've ever seen it before," Max continued,
holding the smoked meat up so that Steve could see better.
"Ginger!"
"Oh! then you recognize it, do you, Steve?"
"Why, yes, I seem to, Max," admitted the other, staring first at the
section of ham and then upwards toward the tree from which it had
apparently descended, aimed so as to strike him; "but what's _our_ ham
doing away off here, tell me that, will you? We didn't fasten it to this
tree, but the one close to our tent; so we'd know if anything came
nosing, around."
"All right, Steve; it looks as if something did come nosing around,
without any one of us being the wiser. And that creature, whatever it
may have been, was carrying the ham away when it thought you must be
following below; so what does it do but let out a screech of fury, and
whang, the ham straight down at you."
"Gee! ain't I glad though he didn't happen to be the pitcher of his
nine, because he might have made a better shot; and if that seven pound
piece of smoked pork had taken me on the coco I'd have seen more stars
than there are up above us now."
"Yes, Steve, it's sometimes better to be born lucky than rich," Max told
him; "but there the other boys are calling to us, and wanting to know
what it's all about. As you're beginning to shiver you'd better turn
around and trot back to where you left your blanket, don't you think?"
Steve had a terribly stubborn streak in his composition. He proved it
right then and there.
"I'm shivering, all right," he remarked, with chattering teeth, "but I
reckon it's more because of the excitement than that I'm cold. Anyway,
if I had the good sense to make my way out here in my sleep just because
I was thirsty, why, seems like it'd be too bad to get disappointed; so
I'm going to have a drink, no matter what happens."
With which he deliberately passed on a dozen paces, reached the spring,
and taking the tin cup they kept there proceeded to slake his thirst.
Max could not help admiring his grit, even though believing that Steve
would be wiser if he forgot his thirst and hurried to the shelter of his
blanket.
"Course you mean to carry the ham back with you, Max?" he inquired, as
he once more joined the other.
"I should say so," Max told him; "and after this we'll have to be more
careful about our smoked meat, unless we want to feed every animal up
here. They're smart enough to get on to that racket of hanging it from a
limb. We'll keep it inside the tent, and they can only get it by
creeping over us as we sleep, which would be a risky thing to do, I'm
thinking."
"Any idea what sort of a thing that animal in the tree was?" asked
Steve, as he cast an uneasy look aloft, doubtless wondering whether the
fierce beast held a grudge against him for having caused it to
relinquish its dinner; so that after that he would be a marked boy.
"I couldn't say," Max replied, slowly. "I only had a glimpse of
something moving up there, and then it was gone. The moon happened to be
behind a cloud at the time, and that helped to fool me. All I can say is
that it was a big animal, and not a 'coon or 'possum."
"Whew! some people keep on saying they never did get that tiger back
after the storm set the animals free from the cages," Steve said,
uneasily.
"Hello! there, what's all this row about?" Bandy-legs called out just
then, for the returning pair had drawn near the khaki colored tent,
where they discovered their chums standing with guns in their hands, and
blankets swathed around their lightly clad figures, looking for all the
world like a couple of mummies, or as Max afterwards told them, like
Mexican peons with their ponchos.
"Yes, that's what we want to k-k-know!" added Toby.
"Oh! Steve here got thirsty while he was sleeping, and stepped out to go
to the spring for a drink," Max informed them. "I happened to see him,
and took a notion I'd follow and see that he didn't come to any harm.
Then some animal up in a tree, thinking Steve was going to get after
him, threw this down to him, and let out a screech that beat anything
I've heard this long while."
"Why, that's a half a ham!" ejaculated the astonished Bandy-legs.
"_Our_ h-h-ham, in the b-b-bargain!" shrilled Toby.
"Just what it is," Max continued; "you see, the rascal had actually
stolen it, and was making off when he saw Steve below, and got angry. It
came mighty near hitting our chum on the head, which would have floored
him good and hard. So he was lucky to escape as he did."
"And we're lucky to get our ham back!" Bandy-legs argued, as though
after all that were the main point--which from a boy's standpoint it
certainly was.
Meanwhile Steve had dodged under the canvas, and presently reappeared,
also swathed in his blanket. He was still too much excited to think of
sleeping, and consequently meant to stand it out with the rest. Perhaps
curiosity had also something to do with the matter, for he would wish to
know what Bandy-legs and Toby thought about the species of animal that
had carried their smoked meat off.
Their tongues did certainly wag at a great rate for a spell. All sorts
of suggestions were made, some of them fairly good, and others bordering
on the ridiculous. Toby was for believing that it must have been a
tiger, or at the very least one of those terrible spotted leopards they
remembered seeing walking up and down in its cage, as though always
hoping to get out to its missing mate.
"And they s-s-say leopards have got the w-w-worst k-k-kind of tempers,"
he insisted, when some of the others threw doubt on this idea.
"Well, whatever it is," Max concluded, "it acted like it was mad at
Steve here for walking in his sleep."
"Don't blame the critter much, either," muttered Bandy-legs; "because
any feller that would be guilty of doing such monkey-shines ought to
have a whole ham flung at his head every time."
"Hold on there," said Steve, sharply; "that's always the way with you
fellows. Why, you ought to be voting me a bunch of thanks right now,
instead of hauling me over the coals like you're doing."
"Oh! is that so, Steve?" cried Bandy-legs, with considerable of satire
in his voice.
"Sure it is," the other went on to say, unblushingly. "Supposin' now I'd
just continued to hit the hay, and snored on like you two seemed to have
done, what's the answer?"
Bandy-legs and Toby exchanged puzzled looks.
"W-w-whatever do you m-m-mean, Steve?" asked the latter.
"How about that fine ham? When, you looked around everywhere for it
to-morrow morning and couldn't find the same high or low, you'd wish
Steve Dowdy might have had a little walking fit on, and saved your bacon
for you, eh?"
Max laughed at hearing that.
"I guess Steve's got it on you, boys, this time," he remarked. "It seems
that in some cases walking in your sleep may turn out to be the right
thing. We do owe him something, because it saved our ham this time. But
all the same he's got to stop the habit before it gets him into a peck
of trouble."
"I s-s-say we p-p-put a rope on him nights," Toby ventured, with
emphasis. "Then if he tries to s-s-slope he'll find himself p-p-pulled
up with a round turn."
"Hey, you just try it, that's all!" Steve told him. "What d'ye take me
for, a horse, to be staked out nights, or hobbled and all that? I give
you fair warning right now that whenever we're in danger of losing some
of our belongings, if I take a notion to step out and walk in my sleep
in order to save the same, I'm going to do it. Get that, don't you,
Bandy-legs?"
In spite of all their exchange of views it seemed that after all they
were no nearer a reasonable solution of the puzzle than in the start.
"We'll look around in the morning and see if it left any tracks," Max
suggested, after it seemed as though they had reached the finish of the
matter so far as deciding on the species of animal went.
"That's the best thing said yet," ventured Steve; "and as usual it was
left for Max to hit in with it. So, let's see if we can go to sleep
again."
They crawled inside the tent and adjusted their blankets again. Max
noticed that Bandy-legs changed his position somewhat. As he now lay no
one could crawl out of the tent by way of the regular exit without
brushing across his recumbent figure more or less. The other did not say
anything as to why he did this, but Max could give a pretty good guess.
Steve was too sleepy to pay any attention to what was going on, or he
might have taken Bandy-legs to task for trying to play sentry over him,
knowing that he must be in the other's mind when he laid this trap.
"We want you to notice, Steve," Bandy-legs told him the last thing,
"that Max fetched a bucket of fresh water in from the spring just now;
and so if you happen to get thirsty again before morning, just help
yourself. It'll save you a lot of trouble."
"Well, seeing that we've got all our grub inside here now, and there's
nothing more to be hooked, I guess I'll keep quiet. But you want to be
careful how you steal my thunder when the credit's passing around."
Saying which, Steve hid his head under the folds of his blanket, and
they knew he had spoken his last word.
The others relapsed into silence, and before long all of them had gone
soundly asleep. Nor was there any further alarm during the balance of
that first night in camp.
When Mas crawled out again dawn had come, and in fact the sun was
peeping up in the east. First Max looked to see that Ebenezer was all
right; for he had felt a little uneasy concerning the horse. He found
that the animal was already beginning to gather in what grass lay around
him, and apparently had not a care in the wide world.
Then the next thing he did was to pass over to the tree in which they
had secured the ham and bacon, although later on removing everything to
a more secure place of storage inside the tent.
Max carefully examined the ground underneath this tree. He was a pretty
fair woodsman, and believed he could easily discover any imprint of
padded feet such as would indicate the presence of a tiger. But in spite
of going over every yard of the soil as much as three times, Max was
finally obliged to admit that there did not seem to be any clue. He
could not find any track such as would tell of an animal having been
there on the previous night.
This set him to thinking along another line. Apparently then the beast
must have entered the tree from another one close by. It was reasonable,
and he saw it could have been easily done by even a gray squirrel, for
the branches interlocked in several places.
This seemed the more convincing when Max remembered that the ham had
been flung bodily out of another tree, showing that the thief was making
off without touching the ground at the time.
"Well, seems like it's going to keep right on being a mystery," Max told
himself as he gave the quest up; "just as that roaring sound last night
may never be solved. Perhaps there are a number of strange wild beasts
at large up here; and that our little outing is going to be an exciting
one after all."
"Yes," added Steve, who had come out of the tent in time to hear Max say
the last of this, "and don't it beat all how things do come around our
way, to give us a grand time? When you look back for the time we've been
chumming together you can see heaps of happenings that other fellows
would give most anything to have cross their trail. But we've got nearly
a whole week up here to ourselves, Max; and I say it will be mighty
funny if we can't guess the answer to a silly little question like this:
Who killed Cock Robin? Or take it the other way, Who tried to knock my
brains out with half a ham! And listen here, another night I'm meaning
to sit up and see if I can't get a crack at the miserable old thief with
my Marlin gun. He'll be sorry the rest of his natural life if he comes
nosing around here again."
Steve meant every word he spoke, and Max could see that he had been
considerably worked up by what had happened.
Of course they would have numerous other things to engage their
attention during this, their first day in camp; but nevertheless from
time to time their thoughts must go out toward the little mystery by
which they were confronted; and this was apt to start fresh talk about
solving the same.