“And we know it’s the right stuff, even before you start in to explain,” Step Hen volunteered.
“Don’t be too sure of that,” laughed Thad; “but here’s the scheme, boys, and let’s hear what you think of it. Now, in the morning, sometime, we’ll just pack up, and start along with our paddles, as if we meant to keep it going through the whole blessed day. But that’ll only be a big bluff, you understand; because, when we’ve got about a mile or so above here, and the coast seems clear, why, we can land, hide our stuff, perhaps leaving one to guard the same, perhaps, and the rest put back to the cabin here.”
“Wow! that’s the thing!” exclaimed Giraffe. “I get the idea, Thad. You expect we’ll hide in here, and gobble the gentlemen up as soon as they come along; ain’t that what you mean, now?”
“Not quite,” said Thad. “It might answer just as well, in case when we got back here we could be sure they hadn’t arrived before us, and were already quartered in the cabin. But if that proved to be the case, why, we’d set to work and try to surprise Charlie Barnes and his pals. You see, whatever we do, we want to keep in the background till we’re just ready to spring our trap; and in that way prevent them from doing us any bodily harm. I’m in charge of the patrol, and I’d feel pretty bad, now, if on going home I had to show up with a bunch of cripples on my hands. That’s what keeps me guessing, and trying to accomplish things without taking too much risk.”
“It’s a good scheme, all right!” commented Step Hen.
“That’s what I say, too,” added Bumpus.
Davy, Allan and Giraffe also declared that they liked the plan immensely; and even Eli Crookes grinned, Jim nodded his head in appreciation; while Sebattis smoked on, and watched Thad admiringly out of the corner of his black eye, as if he had never before run across such a smart lad, and wondered what it meant.
“But of course,” Thad went on to say, “the success of such a plan depends altogether on one thing to begin with.”
“You mean whether they’re bound to come to the cabin here?” asked Allan.
“That’s it,” the scout leader went on, calmly. “I thought that all over carefully, and decided that, judging from the actions of that man in looking in here, as well as their hanging around the vicinity when they had ought to be well on the way to the Canadian border, that there must be some sort of unusual attraction about this same old cabin for those rascals!”