"Shall we follow him?" asked Sandy.
"Aw, what's the use?" Tommy questioned. "You said yourself, a little while ago, that he'd come back to get a bite of that haunch of venison."
"And I believe he will!" answered the boy.
George was made comfortable in one of the bunks, additional fuel brought in for the night, and then Will, Tommy and Sandy set out to bring the supplies and tents from the camp.
"Suppose Antoine, or some one else, should bring the Little Brass
God to this cabin," George began.
"I wish we knew whether it was Antoine who sat before the fire last night," Thede puzzled. "If I could just get my hands on that idiotic little plaything, I'd sneak back to old Finklebaum and get his hundred dollars so quick it would make his head swim."
"His hundred dollars!" repeated George. "I thought I heard you saying last night if you got hold of the Little Brass God, you'd make him put up a thousand dollars for it!"
"So I would, too," declared Thede. "And he wouldn't pay the thousand dollars, either, unless he saw a chance to make ten out of it!"
During the entire absence of the boys George and Thede discussed the mystery of the Little Brass God. They wondered how it had made such good time into that country, and puzzled over the strange fact that they had blundered upon it on the very night of their arrival.
But when at last the boys returned with the tents and a part of the provisions, drawn along on the "drag," they had reached no conclusion whatever.