CHAPTER XXII.

THE NIGHT ALARM.

“What did I do with my gun?” cried Giraffe, darting around this way and that, as he tried to remember in which corner he had stacked his rifle, after coming in earlier in the night, from the bear hunt.

Already had Thad, Allan and Davy snatched up their weapons, and made a bolt for the door, following the lead of Jim and Eli, and wildly excited by the possibilities of finding that something of a tragic nature had been occurring without.

Poor Bumpus, having no gun of his own, looked around in despair. He certainly did not want to be left behind when all this turmoil was going on; nor was he desirous of rushing out without some sort of means of defending himself, in case he was set upon by enemies.

So he hastened to snatch up the same stout stick which had enabled Thad to pry loose the heavy hearthstone. And swinging this vigorously, Bumpus trotted after the other scouts, dragging his half-unfastened leggings along with him as he went.

It was dark outside, for the young moon had gone to rest long before. But then Thad, with his customary wisdom, had remembered this, and as he went out he snatched up the only lantern they had brought along.

Bumpus could hear them all making for one point, and he followed suit. Eli and Jim had been able to locate the quarter from whence that single shot had come, and were now heading for it.

At any rate, there had been no succeeding shots, no bombardment of the cabin. And Thad, thinking it wise to have some light on the subject, stopped for a few seconds to scratch a match, and apply the flame to the wick of the lantern, after which he again hastened on.

By that time the others had gone ahead, but his short delay served one good turn, since it enabled poor puffing Bumpus to reach the side of the patrol leader, which fact, no doubt, gave the fat boy considerable gratification.

“What is it, Thad?” Bumpus managed to gasp, as they hurried along.

“I don’t know myself,” came the reply; “but we’ll soon find out now, because I hear them talking just ahead.”

“And that’s Sebattis, too,” declared Bumpus, in a relieved tone; just as though he may have been worrying over the possibility of the Indian having been injured when that gun was discharged.

“Of course it is,” Thad said. “And I never thought it was any one else but him who fired that shot. He must have believed he saw a suspicious figure making up through the brush, or trying to damage our boats; though why these men should want to do that, when they’re hoping for us to clear out, surprises me.”

They were now close on the rest of the party; indeed, by the light which the lantern gave, they could make the group out, all of the others being clustered around the Indian guide, who was talking in his usual short-sentence way.

“Hear sound, see something move, shoot!”

That comprised the whole business with Sebattis. Where a white man would have described how he was thrilled to locate the suspicious noise; and tell what his feelings were as he drew up his gun and blazed away; the Penobscot Indian simply gave the bare facts—he came, he heard, he fired.

“You don’t think, now, it could have been one of those wolves we heard yelping last night, do you, Sebattis?” Giraffe ventured to ask, more to draw the other out than because he himself believed any such thing.

“Huh! when wolf speak does he swear hard?” asked Sebattis, quaintly.

“Oh! then he _must_ have been a man, because so far animals haven’t learned how to use hard language,” admitted Giraffe, doubtless chuckling at the success that had followed his little plan.

“He must have been pretty mad because you blocked his plans, to use hard words like that,” ventured Davy.

“Hurt!” declared the guide.

“He means that he thinks he wounded the fellow,” explained Thad.

“Well, what else could he expect, to come nosing around our camp like that, and even taking a sly shot at our hunters, after stealing their nice buck?” demanded Bumpus, who could not be accused of acting as though he were sleepy now.

“Where were they when you heard them first, Sebattis?” asked Thad, wishing to get all the information possible.

“Round here, mebbe. Hear talk in whisper like, and know two men come. Then fire just one shot. That all. They make off in hurry, quick!”

“Let’s see if we can find their tracks,” suggested Step Hen; but before he spoke Thad was already circling around, holding the lantern close to the ground, and carefully looking to see if there could be found any signs telling that the Indian had not made a mistake.

“I hope they won’t think to take a pot shot at the lot of us while we stand around here,” said Giraffe, uneasily.

“You needn’t worry,” spoke up Bumpus: “a sharpshooter couldn’t hit you, because you ain’t wide enough to make a shadow. Think of me, and what dreadful chances I’m taking all the time. They could get me by shootin’ with their eyes shut. But all the same, you don’t hear me whine. I’m ready to take my medicine without showing the white feather.”

“What’s that over there; looks like a man kneeling down, and aimin’ a gun!” called out Step Hen just then; and forgetting the boast that was still on his lips, Bumpus threw himself on the ground, and started to crawl behind a clump of thick bushes.

“It’s only a stump, after all,” announced Thad, throwing the light of his lantern in the direction of the suspicious object.

“Get up, Bumpus, the coast is clear,” said Giraffe, sneeringly.

“These old leggings keep gettin’ under my feet the worst kind,” remarked Bumpus, complacently, as though a poor excuse might be better than none. “But see there, the Indian’s found something or other. Just as like as not it’s them tracks we’re all lookin’ for.”

“Just what it is,” added Davy Jones, eagerly.

As scouts who yearned to learn the many interesting things connected with woodcraft, it can be set down as certain that Step Hen and his comrades gathered about Sebattis and Thad, then and there, convinced that something was coming worth while.

“Just as Sebattis told us, there were two of them,” Thad was saying, while he bent down to see the imprint of footgear at closer range.

“Seems to be something familiar about one of them tracks, Thad,” remarked Giraffe.

“Yes, our old friend, the patched shoe, has turned up again,” chuckled the patrol leader, pointing to the plain, unmistakable sign across the toe of the impression of the shoe.

“Which of course means that Charlie is doing it again,” Step Hen remarked. “He wants to be in every mix-up, seems like. But if here are two, where is the other feller?”

“You know we decided that he must be sick or something like that,” Allan pursued.

“They were coming straight at the cabin when our guard turned them around, and sent ’em flyin’,” Giraffe put in. “That looks like they wanted to see if we’d disturbed that stuff any. I guess they’re gettin’ rather nervous about our hangin’ out here so long. It sorter interferes with their plans, p’raps.”

“Well,” Allan observed, drily, “they’ll see us getting out of here to-morrow, if they keep their eyes open, which we hope will be the case. And then perhaps this Charlie Barnes and his two cronies will think they’re safe in entering the old cabin.”

“And putting up at the woods’ tavern for a time, feedin’ off our nice venison, to beat the band,” grumbled Giraffe, who never could forgive the hobo outfit for depriving the scouts of that young buck.

“I wonder, now,” piped up Bumpus, “if the chief means to start in tracking these two men tonight? He’s thrown a good scare into ’em, seems; and they’re running yet, I just reckon; but he gave ’em back the shot they fired at Thad and Eli and Davy here. That’s the way we pay back our debts. All good scouts are supposed to settle when they owe anything, ain’t they? What’s Thad doing now, I wonder?”

“What do you take us for, Bumpus?” demanded Giraffe. “Don’t you understand that Thad said he wanted us to do things with as little risk as we could? And then, to think we’d try to foller up these hard cases, holdin’ a lantern, just to ask ’em to bang away at us as much as they pleased. We ain’t that green. The other plan promises to work best, and you see if Thad don’t stick by it.”

“Well,” said the fat boy plaintively, “How was I to know what they’d expect to be doin’? And when you’re puzzled what to think, ain’t it policy to just hold off, and fight for wind? That’s what I was adoin’ when I said that. But Thad is lookin’ for something again, because he’s movin’ off with the lantern.”

Not wishing to be left in the dark, all the others followed Thad and Sebattis, both of whom seemed to be searching industriously along the ground, as if they had lost something which was worth looking for.

“P’raps they got a notion one of them fellers might a dropped somethin’,” suggested Step Hen, himself unable to grasp the true meaning of the strange actions of the two ahead.

“You’re closer to it than you think,” was the puzzling remark of Allan; while old Eli and young Jim seemed too amused by the remark.

And while they all watched, and speculated, each according to his light, they saw Sebattis come to a pause. He called to Thad, whose back happened to be turned at the moment; and the patrol leader hastened to join him.

Sebattis was pointing down at his feet. The boys noticed that there was something rather dramatic about his attitude while doing this; and Giraffe voiced the feelings of his mates when he said:

“He found what he was looking for, believe me; and what d’ye suppose it c’n be?”

The scouts pushed forward. Just as Thad was doing, so Allan, Step Hen, Davy, Giraffe, yes, and even Bumpus, as curious as the rest, craned their necks forward, and stared at the object in plain view beyond the tip of the dark finger which Sebattis had extended.

There was a plain imprint of a shoe there, though not the one that bore the mark across the sole. And there was something more than this; for when Thad touched what seemed to be a little dark pebble, with the point of a stick he had picked up, they realized what it was.

A drop of blood, showing that Sebattis had made no mistake when he declared his random shot had at least slightly wounded one of the prowling hoboes!