The mother stopped their horse as suddenly as she had started it. She backed into some elders and, peeping through the blossoms, she studied the scene so far before them. She decided: "Those four men are up to mischief. I know it—I am perfectly sure of it by the way they act. They are sneaking away from something."
"They haven't seen us, but they are ready to make tracks. See 'em go!" cried Doby, as the men sprang to saddle and fled at a gallop along the "Trace" to the meeting-grounds.
The mother considered a moment. "Such young rowdies like to play pranks on the preacher. They must have been doing something of that kind when we first saw them at the forest edge of bushes. Perhaps they have hidden his Bible. That is one of the things such jokers do. We will follow their tracks into the undergrowth and get his Book back for him."
Doby did not fancy entering that unknown forest where more miscreants might be lurking. But as his mother expected him to hold the flintlock ready for any danger they might meet, there was nothing for him to do but to swallow his doubts and to turn the horse in when they came to the trampled spot.
More boldly than he felt, he peered about as they followed the line of disturbed branches into the heart of the forest.
After a few rods, "O-o-oh!" murmured his mother, "o-o-oh!" with pity and indignation in her tone.
Here was a jest! The best of all frontier tricks! The funniest thing a practical joker could imagine!
In front of them, tied to a tree, was not the preacher's Bible, but the preacher himself, bound and gagged and left alone.
The hour for his sermon was close at hand, yet here he was, silent and helpless, a mile from the meeting. Young huskies of the border considered it a fair game to bait the circuit-riders and to make it as difficult as possible for them to reach their hearers. If one baffled them and arrived at the appointed place on his circuit, they tried to keep him from preaching by all sorts of traps.