“Why not come right out with it?” said Joe, his face flushing with indignation. “It was Buck Looker and his gang who did it. I’m just as sure of it as though I had seen them. It’s no thanks to them that I’m not dead or a cripple this minute.”
“That explains something that Jimmy and I noticed just before we came up,” said Herb eagerly. “We saw Buck and Lutz hot-footing it down one street and Terry Mooney down another. I thought they were having a race around the block or something like that.”
“That just proves what I said,” declared Joe. “They were waiting around to gloat over the hole they thought they had put us in. Then when they saw that one or both of us were going to be smashed on the rocks and perhaps killed, they got scared and lit out so as to be as far away as possible when the thing happened. Then they couldn’t be suspected of being mixed up in it. It’s all as clear as daylight, and it adds another tally to the score we have against those fellows.”
“Oh, well, a yellow dog is a yellow dog, and he acts according to his nature,” said Bob. “But now since you fellows are here, come up the ladder and take a look at the aerial and see what kind of job we’ve made of it.”
Herb and Jimmy followed him up the ladder and were loud in their praises of the new contrivance.
“Couldn’t have done it better myself,” said Jimmy patronizingly. “I didn’t worry about my not being here, for I had the fullest confidence in you and Joe. I knew you’d get it up all right.”
He avoided the pass that Bob made at him, and after the boys had gathered up the tools and left everything shipshape, they came down the ladder and rejoined their comrade.
“I guess it’s home for us now,” said Herb.
“And mighty glad I am that none of us has to be carried home,” put in Bob.
“You bet,” remarked Joe, as he rose to go. “Do you remember what you said, Bob, about finishing that job if it took a leg? Well, it came pretty near to taking one—or two—or perhaps even worse than that.”