“What do you reckon that nuisance meant?” demanded Digby Fordham the
minute Tony Traddles was out of hearing.
“He was hinting at something. Whether he meant to help us, or confuse
us, I do not know,” confessed Chet.
“He said they were not going to Grub Stake.”
“Not at once.”
“Well! where the dickens are they going, then?” demanded the disgusted
Dig.
“I don’t know. Unless the story of that Steve’s having lost the deeds is
true, and he means to try to slip us and go back to the place where he
thinks he dropped them.”
“He’ll have a hot time slipping us,” the other boy said boastfully.
“I don’t know. He evidently knows this country better than we do.”
“That’s easy, for we don’t know it at all!” exclaimed Dig.
“Well, there may be a chance for them to fool us in these rocky hills.
Maybe this proposal for a buffalo hunt is just for that purpose.”
“Not if they need meat so badly as they seem to,” remarked the other
boy, with more thoughtfulness than he usually displayed.
“I see!” exclaimed Chet quickly. “You think they’ll wait to provision
themselves before they take the back trail?”
“Yes.”
“I’d just like to know,” Chet murmured.
He was rather silent all through supper. They could look right down into
the other camp and see the two rascals moving about their own fire. The
night was still and the air very sweet. They were not troubled by gnats
much, either, and the horses were not restless.
Dig rolled into his blanket early. Chet did not put more fuel on the
coals, for he did not want the men below to see his movements. They kept
up a good fire for some time, however.
The boy knew the men were talking, for occasionally the breeze brought
to him the sound of their voices. Dig slept like a top, and Chet slipped
out of the camp, passed near the horses to see that they were all right,
and then, pistol in belt, crept quietly down the hillside.
Eavesdropping was not a game he loved to play; but the situation seemed
to call for it. If he could learn something about the plans of the two
rascals, it might help him decide his own course. For Chet Havens felt
deeply the responsibility that circumstances had thrust upon him.
He was naturally a thoughtful boy, and when his father had talked so
seriously to him regarding the errand to Grub Stake, Chet had no idea
that he would fail in any particular to fulfil his father’s wishes.
It was farthest from his thoughts (as it probably was from Mr. Havens’)
that anybody would attempt to steal the deeds from Chet. The boy accused
himself of having been careless, however; in no other way could the
deeds have been taken from him.
Now he must get them back if it was a possible thing. Chet was prepared
to run into some danger, if necessary, to accomplish this end. Therefore
he crept near to the scoundrels’ camp and chanced a fight with them if
they should find him there.
They did not seem to be discussing anything of much moment to Chet,
however, when he first established himself behind a tree within a few
feet of the campfire. Tony was speaking:
“Well! we gotter have some o’ that buffalo meat—that’s all there is to
it.”
“If those boys kill one,” sneered Steve.
“Oh, they’ll kill one all right,” said Tony, with confidence. “You’ve
seen what they can do with a gun—’specially that Chet Havens. He’s a
crackajack!”
“Oh, I see,” grumbled the other man. “Confound ’em! If it wasn’t for
their guns I’d drive ’em out of the country easy.”
“Well, wait till we can load up with some grub before taking the back
track; that’s what I say,” growled Tony, puffing on his eternal pipe.
“You think altogether too much of your stomach, Tony,” complained the
other man.
“Why shouldn’t I think of it? Nobody else is goin’ to,” declared the
hairy one, philosophically. “Tony Traddles has had to look after his own
self since he was knee high to a hoppergrass. Ain’t nobody cared a
continental for him—no, sir! Old man Havens chucked him out’n his job
like he was a dawg.”
“And I should think you’d be sore on this son of his, for it,” observed
Steve.
“Huh! I try ter be. But them boys are such smart rascals! They kin shoot
an’ foller a trail, an’ all that. They are free-handed, too.”
“There we get right back to Tony’s stomach again,” snarled the other
man. “You make me sick!”
“Well, it don’t make me sick to pick the bones of a fat bird that
somebody else has shot,” quoth Tony Traddles. “And you ain’t so much!”
he added, with some peevishness. “You said if you got them papers from
the kid you’d make a hunk of money, and I should have some of it. And
then you go and lose ’em—if you lost ’em.”
“Oh, I lost ’em all right,” returned Steve, “or I’d not be knocking
around this country with a couple of boys tagging me.”
“And you think you can find ’em?” queried Tony.
“I believe I can. And I want to shake these kids so as to do it. When I
slipped into the river as we swam the horses from that island, I flung
my coat ashore to keep it dry. Remember?”
“Yes.”
“That’s when I lost the deeds. The packet fell out of my pocket right
then. I was in too much of a hurry getting that crazy pony ashore to
think of anything else.”
“Well! it’s a long way back,” remarked Tony. “And I insist on getting
meat first. You can’t shoot game with your pistol, and this old gun of
mine ain’t much good. I told you so in the first place.”
“If we wait for these boys to shoot something, we’ll have to kill
another day,” grumbled Steve. “We can only slip out and leave ’em in the
dark.”
“Then make it to-morrow night,” said Tony, with decision, and he rolled
over and knocked the heel out of his pipe into the fire.
Chet stole away from the encampment of the two rascals within a few
minutes. Tony had pillowed his head on his arm and gone to sleep. It was
Steve’s first watch.
The boy had heard enough of importance to show him that his suspicions
were upheld. The man really had lost the deeds which he had stolen.
He had not discovered the loss, in all probability, until he was made
prisoner and searched by the two boys. At once his mind had gone back to
his adventure on the shore of the river, now mentioned to Tony Traddles.
Chet was confident that he knew what river was meant. It was the shallow
stream in which the men had striven to hide their trail just after they
had robbed Chet and Dig. The former believed the island spoken of must
be below the ford at which he and his chum last crossed.
“I could turn back and find that place—pretty nearly—in a day and a
half,” thought Chet. “That’s where the fellows aimed for when they
started out the morning after we captured them.
“Our sticking to their trail made them turn this way. Steve is going to
try to throw us off and go back to find the papers. _Why not beat him to
it?_”
Chet had sufficient food for reflection to keep him wide awake during
his vigil. He let the fire die out and he kept back in the darkness,
watching the other camp continually. He saw Steve move about
occasionally; but the fellow did not offer to come up the hill; and as
for Tony, by the way he had gone to sleep, Chet was quite sure he would
not be easily aroused.
When Chet awoke his chum and partner he said nothing about what he had
overheard at the other camp. Only, he advised his friend to watch the
man below them closely.
“I’ll keep my eye on him, all right,” promised Dig. “B-r-r-r! it’s cold!
What did you let the fire go out for, Chet?”
“It’s safer. You can see better without the light flickering in your
eyes. And you can stir around and keep warm,” said Chet. “It’s me that’s
got to lie cold. Wake me up in good season, now.”
Dig obeyed that last request. He roused Chet just as soon as the dawn
streaked the eastern sky. Dig Fordham was excited, too.
“Whew, Chet!” he whispered. “I’ve thought up the greatest scheme!”
“What is it?” demanded Chet, yawning. “My! but you did get me up early
enough, in all good conscience!”
“Don’t be a lazybones. The coffee is made,” said Dig. “And don’t forget
that we’re to have another crack at the buffalo.”
“Yes? Well, maybe.”
“Whew! where’s your enthusiasm?” demanded Dig, disappointed.
“Wait till I get the stickers out of my eyes,” said Chet, going to the
full spring.
After he had ducked his head into the cold water, and scrubbed his face
and hands and behind his ears, he felt more awake to the situation.
“What’s the wonderful idea, Dig?” he mumbled, as he rubbed himself dry
on the towel he had had wisdom enough to bring along. Camping out
without a towel is simply punishment; and it was easy enough to dry the
towel in the sun while they ate breakfast.
“I reckon you don’t want to hear about it,” grumbled Dig.
“Oh, go on! I was half asleep. What have you been conjuring up, old
man?”
“Why, it’s about those buffaloes,” Dig whispered, as though he feared
somebody would hear him besides Chet. “Rather about the big bull.”
“Well?”
“Let’s capture him!” exclaimed Dig.
“Huh? Oh, yes, another joke. Put salt on his tail?”
“By the last hoptoad that was chased out of Ireland!” declared Dig
earnestly, “this is a good thing.”
“I don’t see how you’re going to capture a creature as big as an
elephant—and twice as mad.”
“That’s where my scheme comes in.”
“Explain! explain!” urged Chet, spreading the towel on a bush.
“Why, I’ll tell you: Just as soon as it began to grow light this morning
I saw Tony lie down and go to sleep. His partner was dead to the world,
too; so I knew they wouldn’t bother us. I took the glasses and went just
outside the timber, there, and tried to find the buffaloes.”
“They’re all right, aren’t they?” asked Chet, with interest.
“Sure. They spent the night in one of those small groves down there.
They’ve just begun to come out to graze.”
“I see.”
“Well, I spied out the whole valley from where I stood. There’s a band
of antelope further down, too. But we don’t care for them.”
“Not while the buffaloes are in sight,” chuckled Chet.
“Now, listen! Across the valley I saw the openings of two or three
narrow gulches—regular pockets in the hill over there.”
“Hey!” cried Chet, sitting up both physically and mentally. “What is
this, boy?”
“My idea,” said Dig, with confidence, “and it’s a good one. Those
pockets can be made into corrals at least, one of them can.”
“You don’t mean it!” exclaimed Chet. “You think we can corral those
buffaloes?”
“Maybe the big one. Sell him to some speculator or a showman,” said Dig.
“Say! that would beat all the hoptoads that ever hopped out of Ireland,”
declared Chet. “Let’s have those glasses.”
“Wait till you have your breakfast.”
“Breakfast be jiggered!” ejaculated Chet. “I want to see what those
pockets look like from out yonder. To corral some of those buffaloes!
Well! that would beat shooting them, I should think,” and he hurried
away from the campfire.