Bart Hodge started to run forward.
“I’ll bet it’s the fellow who killed the moose.”
Parker and all the others, prisoners and officers combined, followed Hodge at a lively gait; but when the tree was gained, no living thing was to be seen.
“He couldn’t have got away,” said the game warden, looking into the boughs as if he expected to see a man hanging from one, as Hans had seen the moose head. “That is, if it was a man. You are sure you saw something?”
This last was fired sharply at Hans.
“So hellup me cracious, a man mit a gun seen me dot dree py!” Hans solemnly asserted. “He vos vly away, I subbose, like a canary pird. Dot vos like a sbirit doo much do suid me, alretty yet. Oxcoose me! I vos vanted dot camp py!”
“Here’s something,” announced one of the deputies, prodding with his gun some object that hung from a limb.
It was found to be a piece of moose meat, hung up, as the head had been. A little search revealed other pieces of moose flesh, all of which the Dutch boy had overlooked. But nowhere could anyone find a trace of the man Hans claimed to have seen.
“Just some animal or other, nosing after the meat,” said Parker, with an air of conviction. “When he saw us, he scampered away, and that was what shook the bushes.”
The sun had now set, and the light was not good under, the trees, but the officers and the members of Merriwell’s party proceeded to look for some traces of the man, animal, or whatever it was that shook the bushes, and also to examine the ground where the moose had been skinned and cut up.