Part 17 (1/2)
”And did you find anything?” asked Elmer, his own curiosity aroused by now.
”I had to go back and forth a heap before I came on a little hole in a snow drift that looked like something had dropped in there,” continued Lil Artha, in a highly mysterious fas.h.i.+on. ”So I began to dig down, and pretty soon my hand touched this!”
He thereupon drew something from its place of concealment, and held it up before the eyes of his astonished companion.
”Why, it only looks like a piece of common gaspipe!” exclaimed Elmer.
”Just what it is,” Lil Artha went on, in an awed tone; ”but say, Elmer, the same is crowded chock full of some sort of stuff that may be dynamite for all I know. It's a sure-enough infernal machine, one of the crude bombs that you read about in the New York papers, such as Italians use when they want to make some rich merchant or banker hand over blackmail money. Look at it yourself, and then you'll know what fetched that skunk of a Zack Arnold up here to this region. He meant to blow Uncle Caleb's cabin to flinders, that's what he did; and p'raps with the owner inside of the same. Huh! no wonder he didn't want that thing to be discovered on his person! I sure don't blame him a little bit!”
And Elmer, as he examined the miserable contrivance which would explode with so great a power for harm, felt a thrill pa.s.s all over his body.
CHAPTER XV
A SCOUT'S EDUCATION
”WHAT do you make of it, Elmer; is it a sure enough bomb?” demanded Lil Artha, whose face was working strangely under the violence of his emotions.
”Looks like it was that, and nothing else,” admitted the scout master, slowly, with a wrinkle across his forehead, as though he might be considering weighty matters, as indeed he was just then, for one so young.
”And there can't be any doubt but what he meant to blow up the cabin of the man he forced himself to believe was his enemy, the kindest-hearted gentleman you and the rest of us ever met up with--tell me that, Elmer, didn't he?”
”Hold on, Lil Artha, don't explode!” cautioned Elmer, soothingly. ”I understand how you feel about this ugly business. Yes, that must have been the scheme that brought Zack away up here in the dead of winter.
Whether he meant to do Uncle Caleb bodily injury or not we've no means of knowing. Let's hope that the limit of his revenge was confined to the destruction of the cabin, and all the valued treasures it held.”
”Well, that would be arson, and the law sits down mighty hard on anybody who deliberately, and 'with malice aforethought,' as I've heard my dad say, sets fire to the property of another. He deserves being kicked out, and we'll have to attend to his case, the whole bunch of us.”
The excited scout made a quick movement, as though about to rush into the cabin, waving the piece of gas-pipe which had been fas.h.i.+oned into a rude but deadly bomb with a fuse to it; Elmer, however, tightened his grip on his chum's sleeve.
”Wait! Don't be in such a hurry, old fellow. Let's reason this thing out a little before you spill the fat in the fire!” he told Lil Artha, in that quieting voice of his that carried such weight with the other scouts.
”But, Elmer, don't you see he's a regular firebrand!” urged the tall boy, twisting a little, as though struggling to get loose from the detaining hand; but only in a faint-hearted fas.h.i.+on, because as always the influence of the scout master predominated. ”How do we know but what right now he's figuring on doing us all some mean trick? We're friends of Uncle Caleb, and he must look on us as his enemies.”
”You forget something, Lil Artha,” urged Elmer.
”Oh! yes, in my hurry I'm always forgetting things; but tell me what I've let slip now, Elmer.”
”It was yesterday that Zack was heading toward this cabin, breathing all sorts of ugly threats against Uncle Caleb, wasn't it?” Elmer continued, in that smooth argumentative tone he knew how to use so well, and which as a rule was so wonderfully convincing.
”Why, of course it was, Elmer,” admitted the other, weakly, yet curiously.
”And something has happened since then, you know, Lil Artha?”
”Oh! sure, several things,” replied the tall scout.
”Zack Arnold had an accident, and found himself facing what might be the end of his evil career,” continued Elmer. ”Now, life is sweet even to such a man; and he couldn't but feel alarmed at the idea of being frozen in the snow forest, because of his broken arm, and having no way to supply himself with food or fire. Then in his desperation he forgot everything else, and came to the cabin of the man he had been calling his enemy. You know what sort of a reception he got, Lil Artha?”
”You bet I do, Elmer; it couldn't have been warmer if he'd been a life-long comrade of Uncle Caleb!”
”All right, then,” the scout master told him, emphatically; ”and you can depend on it Zack has had an experience unlike anything he ever ran up against before. I've been watching him, and trying to figure out what might be pa.s.sing through his brain; and the fact of his throwing this bomb as far away as he could shows that he's heartily ashamed of ever entertaining the notion that Uncle Caleb was an enemy of his.”