From the top of the bluff, where his friends had found their way seemingly blocked, he heard voices calling to him—the voices of Harry Rattleton and Jack Diamond, who had turned back to search for him.
Hans answered, with a squeak of delight.
“See dot!” he cried, taking the pig from his shoulders and holding it above his head. “Dot vos a vilt hock vot kilt me ven I dried to ead him ub! I vos a fighder, I tolt you, ven I ged him starded!”
It was with the utmost difficulty that Ward Hammond concealed his intense chagrin and bitter hate when he arrived with his companions at the goal of the mountain-climbing race and found that Frank Merriwell’s party had beaten them by more than thirty minutes.
“It’s all right,” he said, with a sickly smile. “Though I do think you fellows must have had wings hidden about you to get here so soon. But wings weren’t barred. Of course, we wanted to win, but we didn’t, and that’s all there is to it.”
While he was talking, old Bob Thornton, carrying the long rifle that Sam Turner had taken from its peg in the cabin, was creeping through the laurel and over the vines toward a point of rocks that commanded a view of the path by which he was sure Merriwell and his friends would descend from the mountains.
He did not try to conceal his bitter hate, as Hammond was doing. His mind was inflamed with the angriest of passions, for Hammond had made him believe that the mountain climb was an excuse on the part of Merriwell to get into these hills, where Thornton’s little copper still, for making liquor, lay hidden.
The ravine that held it was less than a mile from the top of Bald Mountain, in a wild and almost inaccessible gorge, and he was fairly shaking with the fear that Merriwell had spotted the gorge from the mountain’s top, and would try to enter it later in the day.
“He’ll never hunt anuther still ef I git a good crack at him!” the mountaineer growled. “The guv’ment’s got ter be larnt that it jes’ ain’t ary bit o’ use to send revnoo spies peekin’ ’roun’ hyar. We uns o’ Bald Mounting won’t stan’ it!”
Ward Hammond dissembled with considerable skill. He laughed, joked and praised the climbing of the members of the Lake Lily Club, all the while wondering if Bob Thornton would try the shot he threatened, and hoping that the bullet would at least maim Merriwell for life.