[CHAPTER XXI]
TOM MAKES PLANS
Tom had two ideas, both centering about one subject—the rescue of his chums. That they were held prisoners in the old mill he had no doubt.
“Of course I could tramp into Wilden,” he mused, as he sat beside the campfire, “and get a posse of men to come here and raid the place. With them to help we could make short work of Wallace, Skeel and company, and we’d get the boys out. But then, on the other hand, that would give the whole game away. I’m sure there’s some sort of treasure in that old mill, or Skeel would never bother with trying to find it. The hermit must have, in some way, proved to him that it’s there.”
“Now, then, assuming that it is in the mill, or somewhere around it, do I want a whole crowd out here, overrunning the place, and maybe finding the treasure? I certainly don’t, even though they might not find it. But what would happen would be that a whole crowd of people, who have nothing else to do, would hang around here the rest of the summer, looking for the treasure if it wasn’t found at the time of the rescue. That would spoil our camp.
“Of course I’ve got to rescue the boys—that’s certain. I might get some of Mr. Henderson’s friends—a few of them—and make them promise to keep it a secret. Even then it would leak out, and the whole town would be out here sooner or later. We wanted to come to a wild place, and we found it. Now there’s no sense in making it civilized.
“No, I’ll work this thing out alone, and I’ll rescue the boys single-handed. I ought to be able to do it after I rescued dad and mother from that cannibal island, and got ahead of old Skeel. I defeated him twice and I can do it again, and I will!”
Now that he had come to a decision Tom felt more hopeful, and he began to go over plans in his mind. He had made and rejected half a dozen, from undermining the mill, and blowing a breach in the walls, to making believe set fire to it and getting in under cover of the confusion.
“But I don’t believe any of those schemes would do,” he mused. “I’ve got to use strategy against those fellows. They are evidently looking for an open attack, by the way the old hermit was doing sentinel duty in the window. I wonder how in the world he got up there when there are no stairs in the mill?”