Under the circumstances no one else was interested in apples and Drummer went alone. At the end of the wall he instinctively reached for his flashlight which he had hung on his belt, and then he realized that he could not use it.
“Better not,” he decided. “I might give our position away, and Buck would be mad. I’ll hunt around in the dark and I guess I can find some on the ground.”
The apple trees were now before him and he stopped under the first tree, looking up. There were apples on the tree he was able to make out, but all of them were beyond his reach. He had no intention of climbing the tree at that time, though he made up his mind to visit the old orchard at some later time and help himself to the apples on the tree.
He reached down, wishing for the added help of his light but deeming it prudent not to employ it. There were apples on the ground and his groping fingers found four of them without any trouble. There were others nearby, but he straightened up with a big one in his hand and carefully felt along the surface of it.
“Got to be careful about eating them in the dark,” he reflected. “Don’t want to go eating any worms! This one feels all right.”
He raised his head, and against the break between the woods and the sky, saw something that for the moment chilled his blood.
A man who looked for the moment like a goblin or some horrible creature from another world, was apparently half-carrying and half-dragging a big sack of meal after him as he crept toward the woods. But the sack struggled and moved and in that instant Drummer’s eyes were opened fully.
He remembered the last flash of Buck’s flashlight and the long silence from the graveyard. It was plain at once that the man they had been chasing was carrying off his chief and for a brief second the stout boy was on the verge of yelling at the top of his lungs. One hand dropped toward his flashlight and then he remembered the apple in his hand. It was hard and Drummer was a fairly good shot.
Trembling with excitement, he threw it toward the two figures before him. It went wide of the mark, it seemed to the boy and he stooped down and hastily gathered up the apples at his feet. Calming down somewhat, he began to throw them with more care, and a grunt told him that his second apple had struck someone. He hoped it had not hit Buck, but he kept on hurling apples.
There was a fierce struggle before him and just as his fingers closed over his flashlight, his last apple having been exhausted, he heard Buck’s voice.