Part 10 (2/2)

Max looked admiringly, also affectionately at the speaker. If there was one trait he liked about Steve, it was his indomitable pluck. The boy was absolutely afraid of nothing that walked, flew, or crawled. He was as bold as a lion, but very indiscreet. He often reminded Max of a small terrier attacking a big St. Bernard, and snapping viciously all the while. Yes, Steve was a bundle of nerves, and not to be daunted.

”I honestly believe you would stick it out if it took all summer, Steve,” he remarked, laying a hand on the other's arm.

”Excuse me, then,” declared Bandy-legs. ”This thing wears on my nerves like everything. I'll soon be skin and bones if it keeps up. Somebody tell me what that big thief wanted with me last night, when he grabbed my leg, and started to haul me out of the tent? That's what bothers me.

He seems to've got a spite against me in particular. I bet you he's got his wicked eye on me, right at this blessed minute.”

”Oh, p'r'aps he thought it was a ham he grabbed hold of,” remarked Steve, flippantly, as he pointed to Bandy-legs' rather plump lower limbs, of which he was rather vain, in spite of their shortness.

But for once Bandy-legs did not laugh at a joke that was on himself. The matter appeared too serious for trifling. How could he ever go to sleep peacefully when expecting to be aroused suddenly by a terrible tug, and feel himself being dragged along the ground, just as though seized by a striped tiger of the East Indian jungle?

”I see there's only one way to be on the safe side,” he was muttering disconsolately; ”I've just got to come to tying myself to the tent pole every night Then if he drags me off, down comes the old tent; and I guess the rest of you'll sit up and take notice at that.”

”You might s.h.i.+n out for home, Bandy-legs?” suggested Steve, just to test the sticking quality of the other.

”But I won't, all the same,” flashed Bandy-legs, with a determined shake of his head. ”If the rest of yer c'n stand havin' that sort of business goin' on, reckon I ought to hold out. But I wish now I'd brought a gun along. Then mebbe he'd let me alone, or take a feller of his size.”

”Come along, boys, let's get things in s.h.i.+pshape again, and see just what's gone!” called out Max, who believed in looking things squarely in the face, and then making the best out of a bad bargain.

So the campers started with a vim to put things as they were before the visit of the unknown forager, who seemed destined to occupy Catamount Island with them during the balance of their stay.

CHAPTER IX.

WATCHED FROM THE Sh.o.r.e.

The day pa.s.sed slowly.

Somehow no one seemed very anxious to stray very far away from the camp.

For one thing it was out of the hunting season; and on this account the presence of many partridges on the island could not lure Max. They had stirred up quite a number while making that little hike toward the upper end of the place; and every time a bird was flushed, going off with a sudden roar of wings, Bandy-legs had weakened; so that by the time they got back home again he felt as though he had been through a spell of sickness.

And then to have that new sensation sprung upon them, and find that an unknown prowler had paid them a visit in their absence, was, as Bandy-legs expressed it, ”too, too much.”

But because the boys lounged around camp was no reason why they were not enjoying themselves hugely. Why, even Bandy-legs tried to forget all the dreadful nights ahead of them still, six in a row, and find some source of amus.e.m.e.nt.

Each fellow seemed, as the afternoon glided along, to just naturally gravitate toward the kind of pleasure that interested him most.

Max and Owen were examining some small animal tracks every little while, which the latter would find along the edge of the water; and as his knowledge of such things lay in the form of book learning, while his cousin had had considerable experience in a practical way, he invariably, after puzzling his head awhile, softly called to Max, who willingly joined him.

Now it was a muskrat that had wandered along the edge of the river, looking no doubt for a fresh sh.e.l.lfish for his supper. Then again, Max proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that a racc.o.o.n had crept up to the edge of the water at a place where an old log thrust out. Here he could lie flat, and fish with his paw for a stray small ba.s.s that happened to pa.s.s too close to the sh.o.r.e for its safety.

The third set of tracks, differing materially from both of the others, Max p.r.o.nounced the trail of a sly mink; which, with the fisher, is perhaps the boldest and most destructive enemy of the brook trout known.

While these two were amusing themselves in this way, and Owen making notes in his little book all the while, Steve was using the rod and line to some advantage. Perched on the end of another convenient trunk of a fallen tree that projected out over the end of the bank, he managed to secure quite a delightful mess of ba.s.s from the pa.s.sing river--”taking toll,” Steve called it.

Toby Jucklin seemed to find his greatest pleasure in taking cat naps. He complained of losing a heap of sleep on the preceding night; and as there was no telling what the second might bring forth, he believed in taking time by the forelock, as he called it.

And Bandy-legs, well, he was sitting there for a long time, working industriously with a pad of paper and a lead pencil; and seemed to be so wrapped up in whatever he was doing that he did not notice Max silently approach, bend down, and secure one of the sheets of paper he had already filled with his crabbed writing.

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