“No other,” said Thad, positively. “They must have located our little fire in some way, and supposed that we were sleeping close by. So they crept up along the side of that bare ridge, where the stones are so thick, and just started to heave a few dozen down. That’s why it sounded like thunder and hail combined.”
“The cowards!” hissed Giraffe, whose honest blood seemed to almost boil with indignation; “the sneaks! Afraid to face four boys because they believed we could shoot some, they had to crawl around to the back door, and play a trick that you’d think would be about the size of the meanest boy in our home town of Cranford, Brose Griffin.”
“They laughed over it, too,” burst out Step Hen, almost as angry as his long-legged chum, “and that shows what kind of fellows they are.”
“Altogether, it was a lucky escape for us,” remarked Allan.
“That’s what,” added Giraffe. “And we owe a heap to Thad’s long head. Never sleep where you eat—that was a pretty good rule for the old hunter to have, when painted Injuns were all around him. And by George! it seems to be all right, even in these modern days.”
“Wow! just think what a time we’d a had,” observed Step Hen, “if we’d been sleepin’ there just as sweetly as—as the babes in the woods, and all of a sudden them rocks began to smash around us. I can just see the whole blessed outfit scrambling in the dark, trying to get behind trees, and yet not knowing which side of the trunk was the safe side.”
Step Hen actually chuckled a little, as though a gleam of humor had begun to light up the serious nature of the situation.
“It was a game just in keeping with such a precious pair of rascals,” declared Thad. “They might have injured some of us badly; and that was just what they hoped to do.”
“Perhaps killed us in the bargain,” Allan added. “Some of the rocks they heaved into that little basin were just fierce. They came down like cannon balls. It was like what Rip Van Winkle heard, when the little old men of the Catskills were playing ten pins with big rocks.”
“But Thad,” remarked Giraffe, “when they get to thinking it over, don’t you reckon now they’ll guess they didn’t do any damage?”