Part 22 (1/2)
”I'm the only fellow on earth who knows,” Tom laughed.
”Then you were at their camp?”
”Of course. My telling you to stone any prowler who visited this place was only a trap. I thought that he'd run off and get the rest of the crew. Knowing you to be alone and unarmed, and believing me to be far away prospecting, they didn't imagine that they'd need their rifles. As soon as they left their camp I dropped in and borrowed the rifles and all their ammunition.”
”Where is the stuff now?”
”Come on and I'll show you.”
”Hold on a minute,” begged Harry, as Tom leaped up. ”Do you miss anything?”
”What?”
”Our a.s.say furnace. Eb and Josh carted it away.”
”Then we'll go after that, first,” Tom smiled. ”Our friends are so sore that it would be hardly fair to ask them to return the furnace.”
That missing article was found about halfway between the two camps.
Tom and Harry picked it up, carrying it back to where it had been taken from. ”Going after the guns, now?” Hazelton inquired.
”First of all,” Tom suggested, ”I think we had better start a roaring good campfire.”
”What do we want such a thing as that for?” Harry protested.
”The day is warm enough.”
”The fire will be just the thing,” laughed Tom quietly. ”Come on and gather the wood with me. Alf! Oh, you Alf Drew!”
But the cigarette fiend was not in evidence If he heard, he did not answer.
”We might as well pay that imitation boy for his time and let him go,” muttered Harry.
”Oh, I hardly think so,” dissented Reade. ”It's worth some time and expense to see if we can't make something more nearly resembling a man out of him.”
The fire was soon crackling merrily. Tom led the way to a thicket an eighth of a mile from camp. Here he produced from hiding three repeating rifles and several boxes of ammunition.
”We'll hold on to these,” Hazelton said.
”For what reason?”
”They'll come in handy to steer off that other crowd.”
”I wouldn't be bothered with keeping the rifles about camp,” Tom retorted, as they started backward.
”But say! Gage's man that went to Dugout will soon be back.
Do you forget that he carries a rifle?”
”Jim Ferrers will be back at about the same time,” Tom rejoined.
”They'll have rifles until the camp will look like an outdoor a.r.s.enal. We don't want these added rifles around camp. Besides, if we kept 'em we'd soon begin to feel like thieves with other folks' property.”