The unknown thing was almost upon him now. His whole face stinging with the recent blow, he tried to flounder to his feet. His upraised arm came into contact with flesh! Some heavy body fell upon his, a writhing mass of humanity. His groping hand clutched a bony arm clothed in some rough, thin material. At least his unknown attacker was human! Gritting his teeth, Jake Utway pulled himself together and grappled with his strange antagonist.
The battle was brief. The enemy seemed more bent upon escaping from Jake’s clutch than remaining to wrestle. It was a question which of the two was the more frightened. Jerry found and clung to a flailing leg until a sudden kick sent him sprawling again. The branches of the undergrowth crackled as the panic-stricken attacker fought his way free.
Painfully Jake scrambled to his feet. With his body scratched by the bushes and bruised in a dozen places, and his face throbbing from its blow against the tree, he now thought of nothing but regaining his tent undiscovered. Jerry must already have made his way back to his own tent. Jake hoped that Mr. Avery was not among those hurrying forms that passed near him in the dark, hastening toward the scene of commotion; but there was a chance that he had not been disturbed, as the lanky councilor was known throughout the camp as a sound sleeper who had to fight his way to wakefulness at Reveille. Jake’s knowledge of the lay of the land now stood him in good stead, and he quickly found the path and scurried toward Tent Ten, stripping off his shirt and sweater as he went. He breathed a sigh of relief as he came to the step of his own tent. Nothing seemed out of the way. His peering eyes made sure that Mr. Avery had not stirred. With shaking fingers Jake undressed fully, scrambled into his pajamas, and got into the rumpled blankets a fraction of a second before he heard steps at the tent door.
The Chief’s low voice floated through the night. “Taking pictures, were you? Well, Jones, if I didn’t know that you were a bit cuckoo, I might wonder what you were up to. As it is——”
“But, Ch-Chief!” Sherlock whimpered. “If you knew what I was taking a picture of, you’d——”
“Shh! Don’t wake up the whole camp!” came the command. “If you have any explanation to make, you can save it until morning. Now, not another word. You’ve made enough racket for one night!”
Jake could not help grinning beneath the covers. Evidently Sherlock, impeded with his camera and other apparatus, had not made his getaway in time. What could the amateur detective have been doing there at that hour? It must have been he whom they heard following them on their expedition. Well, time enough to worry in the morning! He listened sleepily as Sherlock stowed away his outfit, not dreaming that the camera contained an exposed film which might be a highly incriminating record of their midnight misdoings.
Sherlock, however, made sure that his precious camera was carefully placed in his locker. He was not minded to lose his sole evidence that he had risked all to obtain proof of the raid. He cast a grim glance toward Jake’s outstretched form as he donned his pajamas for the second time that night. Little did the brothers reck that Sherlock Jones, the detective, had not failed!
Sherlock wakened in the morning a few minutes before Reveille, and glanced across the tent to see if the adventure of the night had left any marks upon his mutinous tent-mate. It had. The most blundering detective could not have failed to note the clue which a tree-trunk had left on the face of Jake Utway. His left eye was ringed about with an inflamed patch of black-and-blue bruises—the most gorgeous “shiner” Sherlock had seen in some time. As he looked, Jake opened the uninjured eye and glanced achingly about him. His gaze fell on the grinning Jones, sitting upright in his bunk.
“How are all the frogs this morning?” Sherlock greeted him. “Say, you ought to ask Ellick for a chunk of beefsteak to drape over that eye of yours. In a couple days you’re going to have a bee-yootiful sunset on your face. It’s already started to turn all colors of the rainbow.”