Then the strange truth burst upon Elmer like a cannon shot. The groans—they must indicate that a sick person lay there, and these two small children (for the boy could not be over six, while the girl might be eight) were trying to carry out the combined duties of nurse, doctor and cook!
"Oh!"
It was Red himself who gave utterance to this low exclamation. He was peering in at the opening over the shoulder of Mr. Garrabrant, and what he saw was so vastly different from his expectations that he received a severe "jolt," as he himself afterwards expressed it.
Perhaps the sound, low as it was, reached the ears of the little girl guardian of the sick bed. They saw her give a jump, and immediately a pair of startled blue eyes were staring in the direction of the opening.
"Come!" said Mr. Garrabrant to his boys, "there is no need of any more secrecy. I think we are needed here, and badly, too."
He led the way around the corner of the lone lodge, with the scouts tagging at his heels, only too willing to follow. Reaching the door of the cabin they were about to enter, when Mr. Garrabrant uttered an exclamation of alarm.
"Get on to the girl, would you?" gasped Lil Artha; and there was no need of his attempting to explain, since his chums could see for themselves.
Small though she was, the girl had snatched up a long-barreled gun, and was now actually menacing the intruders. Her white face had a desperate look upon it, as though at some time in the past the child had been warned that there were bad men to be met with in those woods. As for the little chap, he had hold of the hatchet with which at the time he must have been cutting kindling wood; for he clutched it in his puny hand, and looked like a dwarfed wildcat at bay.
Elmer, as long as he lived, would never forget that picture. And as for the other boys, not one of them could so much as utter a single word.
"Hold on, my child!" cried Mr. Garrabrant, raising his hands to show that they did not hold any sort of weapon; "we are friends, and would be only too glad to be of help to you. One of us is something of a doctor, if it happens that anyone is sick here. Please let us come in."