“We believe that,” sneered Wolf. “Just because you saw us sitting on the porch of that lodge, you blazed away at us. I can have you arrested for that.”
Kent looked at him coldly. “The fact of the matter, Wolf, is that we were asleep in the Bronson cabin at the time that shooting happened. We got dressed and came out as soon as we could, and you and your friends were running across the ice. We didn’t have a thing to do with it.”
“I suppose I’m to believe it or not,” scoffed the boy from the island.
Tim dug down into his Mackinaw pocket. “I guess we can soon settle that question,” he said. “Here are the empty shells that we picked up outside our cabin after the shooting. You can see that they are far too big for our little rifles, and you know that it wasn’t a shotgun that was fired at you. Need any further proof?”
It was evident that the boys from Rake Island did not, but they were in anything but a pleasant frame of mind. They were anxious to make trouble but had no ground to stand on. Wolf tried a new line of attack.
“Your father has charge of that lodge,” he accused Barry. “If anything had happened to us, he would have been responsible. We had been up the lake to a dance hall and came back late. All we did was to sit down on the porch of the lodge because Hodge here was unsteady——”
“Don’t be telling all you know,” spoke up a boy with a pasty, unhealthy-looking face.
“Well, anyway, somebody shot at us,” Wolf went on. “If we had been hit, your father would have had to pay for it.”
“I don’t think so,” Barry denied. “I guess you know that the lodge has the name of being haunted, and you were taking your own chances when you sat on the porch.”
“Some fine day our bunch will go up there and crash in,” Wolf boasted. “We’ll see what all this ghost business is.”