“He walloped me!” spoke up a shrill voice, more whimpering than bloodthirsty, and the little fellow rubbed himself tenderly at the painful memory.
“And served you right, too!” put in a third Revenger. “I didn’t know you were going as far as you did. I think it was a bunch of cowardly tricks—soaping up his tooth-paste and trying to soak his blankets with a pail of water—and if I had known, I wouldn’t have let it happen!”
“Aw, say, Iron Gauntlet, old fellow,” whined the leader; “you ain’t goin’ to back out like that, are you? Why, Stabber and Red Rover and the rest of us only did all this stuff to help you out!”
“I don’t need that sort of help, thank you,” replied Iron Gauntlet, settling back in his place. “It was mean, and from now on I want to tell you that I——”
“What’s that?” cried a small lad to his right, starting up in his place and listening fearfully. The leader laughed sneeringly.
“Don’t get scared, kid. Ain’t the Headless Green Dragon here to protect you? That was only an owl hootin’. Gee, you guys are sure a bunch of babies. A fine gang of Revengers you turned out to be!”
“But it sounded pretty terrible, Dumb,” muttered the lad, shivering. “I don’t like it here in the woods—it’s too spooky! Suppose a bear or something came after us!”
Dumb Blum laughed again. “No bears around here. And even if there was, I guess they wouldn’t bother me! Now, we got to figure what to do next. If Iron Gauntlet here thinks we ought to lay off Brick Ryan for a while, why, there’s lot of other varlets around camp we could torture—— Ooh! Look there!”
The bold master of the dread secret society pointed a shaking hand. His small followers fell back, several of them squealing with terror.
Dirk Van Horn looked in the direction at which Blum was fearfully pointing. Above the stone dais of the Chief before them rose a horrible shapeless form, gleaming with unearthly fire. Slowly, as they watched, rooted to the spot, the monster stirred, the folds of its skin glowing with a pale green luminescence, and uttered at the horrified boys a sepulchral bellow!