“That will mean we’ll be sleeping out in the open for a few nights at least,” Ted told them. “You see, when we crawl out there we’re not going to just sit there for a few hours and then go back into the tents. It is pretty likely that this fellow will try his next piece of funny work in the middle of the night, and when he does we’ll want to be out of the camp and a whole lot nearer to him than he thinks for. If he tries anything more like setting the woods afire we’ll be right on top of him before he can get very far, and in order to do so we’ll want to camp out and away from the tents. So tonight when it gets dark we’ll let the fires die down a bit and then we’ll go to our tents as though we intended to turn in early. From in the tents we’ll slip out the back one by one, each with his own blanket, and we’ll make an outdoor camp in the maple grove.”
“Won’t it be cold outdoors?” a boy asked.
“No, it won’t be. It is warm nights, as you know, and it won’t hurt us a bit to sleep outside. Of course, if a storm comes up we’ll crawl back and wait until a better night comes along.”
After supper that night they allowed the fires to die away to a mass of red embers and then one by one drifted into their tents. As soon as they entered the shelters they rolled up their blankets, strapped them on their shoulders and one by one raised the back wall of the tents and slipped out into the darkness back of the tents.
Here the blackness was intense and they found that crawling was not necessary. Keeping well to the darkness and out of the feeble light from the fires they stole one by one to the grove of maples and there assembled, until all of them were in the place. This grove was of ample size to hold them all and after some low-pitched conversation, which Ted and Buck took care to keep down and discourage, they spread out their blankets and made their first attempt at outdoor sleeping.
Some of them went to sleep at once, while others, finding sleeping under the stars a distinct novelty, lay awake for some little time. But all of them were getting used to the camp life by this time and it was not long before all of them slept soundly.
Morning came without anything having happened and they awoke in some disappointment. Ted saw that he had omitted some important part of his scheme.
“We should have had them sneak back in camp and come out of their tents, just as though they had slept there all night,” he told Buck. “If anyone is watching the camp and sees us come out of here, they’ll catch on to the plan at once. I never thought of that part.”
“Tomorrow morning we’ll have to wake up just before dawn and sneak back, to finish our sleep in the tents,” nodded Buck. “I’ll tell you what we do know. Suppose we go off into the woods a short distance and then enter the camp from a direction back of the springs? Then, if anyone should be watching and sees us come in, they’ll think we took an overnight hike and are just getting in.”
“Providing they didn’t see us going into the tent for the apparent purpose of going to sleep there,” reminded Ted. “But we’ll do it that way and trust to luck.”