“I peen sick py my sdomach,” Hans groaned, trying to stand on his shrinking legs. “Misder Game Varden, you don’d vos going to put yourselluf in chail, vos you? Dot mooses didn’t kill me; id fint my head ganging in dot dree. I hobe I may cross my heardt und die uf dot ain’d so!”
One of the deputies who had come to the tent door and now saw and heard Hans, broke into a roar of laughter.
“Vot vos dot vool laughing py me?” Hans snapped, his anger for the moment overcoming his fright.
“This officer wants you to take us to the place where you found the moose head,” said Merriwell.
He was thinking of Caribou, even as he said this, and vainly trying to find a reason for the guide’s strange departure and stranger absence.
Jack Diamond was also thinking of Caribou, while his heart warmed loyally toward Merriwell. He had not set his opinion against Merry’s because of any pig-headed obstinacy. It hurt him to think ill of the guide; still, he believed he was correct in his first opinion that Caribou was not a man to be trusted, and he was equally sure now that Caribou had sold the party into the hands of the game warden for the purpose of obtaining a reward. If the guide got fifty dollars for each man convicted and for each case against that man, he would receive five hundred dollars, an immense sum to such a man as John Caribou.
“I peen sick,” Hans alleged. “I don’d tink I coult fint dot dree again, so hellup me!”
“Hans will take us there all right, I’m sure, unless he should miss the way,” said Merriwell, turning to Parker, “but it’s too late to talk of leaving here to-night. We can stay in the camp till morning and make a good start then. I know that you are mistaken, that you are barking up the wrong tree, as the saying goes, but I’m not foolish enough to resist an officer. So, if nothing turns up to show you that you really are mistaken, we will go with you, but I beg that you won’t ask us to start till morning. Hans, show us now where the head was found.”