“Then we came closer, and saw a sight that made us furious,” Thad went on, a frown on his usually placid brow. “There was our lovely little buck, all carved up as fine as you please, and by one who knew just how to do the business, too. The best pieces had been carried away, and we were left only what might have done for the foxes or wolves!”
“Whew!” burst out the impulsive Giraffe, “say, that was enough to make anybody as mad as hops. I can just see Davy here jumping around like fun. Of course you looked for a trail, didn’t you, Thad?”
“That was the very first thing we did,” resumed the other; “and there wasn’t any trouble about finding one either; for Eli said they had jumped off in such a big hurry he just knew they must have heard Davy’s shots, and expected that we were coming back for our game. Well, there wasn’t any use crying over spilt milk, boys. But we were so much upset by our misfortune, and so mad at those fellows, that we just started off on their trail.”
“Meaning to hold them up, if only you overtook the bunch?” suggested Bumpus, who was listening with all eagerness, his eyes round with interest.
“Oh! well, none of us hardly knew what we meant to do,” Thad answered; “I rather guess our only thought just then was to try and recover the fine venison those two rascals had robbed us of.”
“Then there wasn’t three of them again?” asked Giraffe, quickly; and Thad smiled as he turned toward the tall scout, saying:
“I was just wondering whether any of you would notice that, when I said it; but the fact is, there were only a pair of ’em; and Eli’s about come to the conclusion the third man must be sick, or badly wounded. Well, we did start off at a hot pace, Eli of course doing most of the trailing.”
“But just hold on there, Thad,” interrupted Davy Jones; “you know well enough that three separate times you found the tracks when Eli had lost the trail; and didn’t he say prompt enough that, for a boy, you certainly did show a heap of smartness?”
“I think we must have followed that trail about a mile;” Thad went on, giving Davy a smile for his compliment; “and it was beginning to get dusk a little, when all of a sudden a gun banged away, somewhere ahead, and we heard the whine of a bullet passing over close above our heads.”
“Say,” and again Davy broke in to express his own individual feelings in the matter, “none of you fellers ever was shot at, and I just guess now you can’t understand the queer feeling it gives you. I felt like the pit of my stomach had kind of caved in, and there was a gnawing just like you have when you’re awful hungry. And when Thad says that there bullet ‘whined’ over our heads, he hits the mark all right, for that’s what it sounded like. I dropped flat on my face in the scrub, and lay as still as a ’possum playing dead.”