THE COMING OF KRACKER.
"They're sure comin', Thad!"
The scoutmaster looked up when Giraffe said this.
"Oh! you must mean that big cannon Kracker, and his two friends?" he remarked, in such a cool tone that Giraffe fairly gasped for breath.
"That's them!" he declared, with an utter disregard for grammar that would have caused him to lose some of his good points in school had the lapse occurred there. "And my stars! they look ugly enough to eat us all up, without caring for bones!"
"But I calculate they won't, all the same," replied the other, smiling with supreme confidence. "Did Allan send you in to tell me?" he continued, for he had delegated the second in command to keep watch and ward when he was busy in his tent doing something.
Giraffe nodded his head violently; indeed, any one who did not know how tenacious a hold it had on that long neck, might have been alarmed lest he dislocate his vertebra through such contortions.
"Yep; and he said you was to come out and see for yourself," Giraffe went on.
"All right, I will then."
Thad quietly picked up his little twelve-bore Marlin before quitting the tent; and there was an air of business about his manner of doing so quite different from the fussy way Giraffe had of doing things, but which was apt to appear much more convincing in the eyes of any one who could read character fairly well.