The minutes dragged along, with the boys exchanging opinions every little while, and then looking around again. They felt under something of a strain, because of this singular happening; and many were the conjectures as to who the party could be back of that gun.
Some were inclined to believe that he might turn out to be a desperate escaped convict who had managed in some fashion to get possession of firearms; and seeing those deceptive khaki suits of the scouts, at once jumped to the conclusion that they must belong to the State militia, and were even then looking for a fellow answering his description.
Others declared that if this had been the case he would surely have sent his whistling lead lower, and not stopped at simply warning them to clear out. And it was even hinted by Giraffe that the unseen party might be the counterfeiter of whom they had heard Tom Smith speak, and who would naturally believe the Government had sent an expedition after him at last, tired of his persistent efforts to inflate the currency of the country at the expense of his fellows.
“Why, Thad, don’t you know, over half an hour’s gone already, and not a sign of our guide coming back?” observed Bumpus, who had remained quiet for a long stretch of time, for him, because the fat scout dearly loved to express his opinions on every subject. “I only hope nothing can have happened to Mr. Smith, because we would be up a tree then. I just know even you haven’t kept track of how we got here; and if there ain’t no trail, however would we get out again?”
“There you go again, Bumpus,” asserted Step Hen, “borrowing trouble. Why don’t you wait till you get to a bridge before you start crossing over? Now, as for me, I’m ready to just take things easy-like, till Tom shows up.”
“There he is now, and beckoning to us to come along!” asserted Old Eagle Eye, who had kept on the alert all the while, so that he might be the first to announce a pleasing discovery.
When Giraffe had thus announced his discovery, the two canoes were immediately put in motion, and the boys hastened to paddle along until they arrived alongside the boat of the guide, which was close to the spot where that mysterious shot had sprung from.
“Reckon you didn’t find our friend, Tom?” remarked Giraffe, familiarly.
The old alligator-skin collector shook his head grimly in the negative.
“He slipped out all right,” he observed, “an’ so slick thet I never did git even a look-in at him. But I found his blank brass shell on the ground, whar he tossed the same outen his gun, which I knows real well. It war Ricky, the moonshiner, as guv yuh thet warnin’ not tuh bother with him; an’ I reckons as how he means hit, too.”