Wally patted Blackie’s arm soothingly. “Don’t you worry your head about that.” He stepped to the door and called commandingly, “Listen, you inside there! I’ve got a gun here, and if you make one more sound I’ll wing you both! You’re here to stay, and don’t forget it!”
The serious depth of his voice must have impressed them, for they maintained a puzzled silence while Wally strolled back to Blackie with a cheerful smile.
“Guess that’ll stop their howling for a while. Now, as I was telling you, I woke up the old farmer—he was snoring away as peaceful as a sheep—and now he’s telephoning to Sheriff Manders at the Center. The sheriff will be along in his car as soon as he can make it, and until then I guess these birds will stay in their cage. They’d better!” he finished grimly. “Now tell me how you happened to be housebreaking here in the dead of night in such bad company.”
Growing more calm, Blackie began his tale, relating how on the night of the snipe hunt he had overheard the two hoboes planning to rob the old hermit, and how he had followed them and heard the scuffle in the house and the scream which had driven him to fly in horror.
“You should have told me or the Chief about that,” was Wally’s only comment. “It would have saved a lot of trouble.”
“I was too scared,” confessed Blackie, “and besides it all seemed like a dream that couldn’t be true.”
He told briefly how he had fallen in with the tramps again at Black Pond, and how they had later forced him to enter the house to plunder it. When he had finished, Wally said nothing for a while, but shook his head once or twice in somber amusement.
“Well,” he said finally, “guess after all these adventures you won’t mind going back to old Lenape for a rest. I’ve come to take you back to Tent Four.”
“But—how did you know where I was? Why are you here?”
“I didn’t know where you were, but I had a pretty good guess. You slipped away from camp, and I figured it was up to me to catch you again. The Chief sent Mr. Lane in the car toward Elmville to look out for you along the road to the railway, and there were quite a number of fellows scouting around for your tracks on the campus. I wasted some time after supper down at the south end of the lake, thinking you might have headed that way toward home, and it wasn’t until this morning that I got the brilliant idea that you would head right into the big timber for a while. I found your trail up on the ridge, and believe me, you hit some pretty rough going in spots! Right in the middle of a swamp I found a hat with your name on it, stuck in some bushes; and then I knew my guess was right. But after clawing my way through a regular jungle of rhododendrons I lost your track, and naturally thinking you would make for Newmiln, I raced over to the Center. I had no idea you would swing down into Black Pond.”