Part 24 (1/2)
”Do you want any help, sir?” queried Frank.
”Oh! I reckon not. When he sees that I've got him he'll be as meek as a lamb. He looks on me as a jealous German general desirous of keeping him out of touch with the king. Watch now.”
He bent over the sleeper and touched his face.
”Wake up, Prince Bismarck,” he said, in a commanding tone.
The other opened his eyes, stared and then smiled amiably, saying:
”Oh! it's you, is it, general? Fate is against me again. I yield myself a prisoner of war. You can fasten my hands if you wish, but I have dined well for one day.”
CHAPTER XIX
SURPRISING TRAPPER JESSE
Mr. Smithson had carried his prisoner off, after he, too, had partaken of the hospitality of Kamp Kill Kare.
”Boys,” he said, in leaving, ”I'm sure under obligations to you for all this, and any time I can repay the debt don't hesitate to ask me. To get Bismarck back safe and sound after such a storm, is going to be a feather in my cap. And only for you I'd be hunting him yet, with only a slim chance of success.”
”Why, that's all right, Mr. Smithson,” Frank had declared heartily; ”we've enjoyed helping you, though it does make a fellow feel bad to see as clever a man as that laboring under such a ridiculous fancy.”
”He was once a professor in a college, and lost his mind through overstudy,” remarked the keeper, as he moved off, with ”Bismarck”
at his side.
”There, see that!” exclaimed Bluff, triumphantly. ”Just what I've told my dad many a time when he complained that I was falling behind my cla.s.s.
I'll make certain to hold this up as an awful warning.”
”Talk to me about you losing your brain by overstudy! There's about as much chance of that as my being made king of England,” laughed Jerry.
”But still it _has_ happened, you see. That establishes a precedent all right, and my father, as a lawyer, is always talking about such things,”
declared Bluff, not in the least abashed.
”Now suppose you sit right down here, Jerry, and let us have the whole yarn from Alpha to Omega. What you haven't been through since you left us yesterday morning isn't worth mentioning, to judge from the hints you let fall. A deer, four wild dogs, lost in the big timber, storm bound, rescuing our most bitter enemy; and now helping to land an escaped lunatic--say, you ought to feel satisfied, old fellow,” observed Frank.
Jerry laughed aloud.
All his recent troubles, as viewed from the pleasant seat by the campfire, with his three chums around him, seemed to fade into insignificance.
”Well, I reckon I am. There was a bear, too,” he said, nodding.
”What! a bear--you ran across a bear?” e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Will, drawing in a big breath and shaking this head as if he deplored the loss of an opportunity to embellish his alb.u.m of the camping-out trip with more fetching views.
”Well, perhaps you could hardly call it that, seeing that he came looking for me, trying to push into the hollow tree where I had sought shelter from the storm.”
”That sounds mighty interesting--trying to get in, too, was he? And I suppose you objected vigorously?” suggested Frank, falling down by the fire and a.s.suming a listening att.i.tude.
”I knew I hadn't lost any bear, you see; and, besides, there wasn't room for two in that old stump. So I asked him to please go away,” said Jerry, with a wink.
”Of course he did just that?” queried Will.