“I’ll say so!” growled Rogers.
Reluctantly the boys left the shack, but as they passed the corner of the building, Dick halted and began to read aloud: “‘All persons are hereby warned against starting fires in any and all forest lands under penalty of—’” Dick paused in his reading. “That’s a fire-warden’s poster,” he remarked with a jerk of his ever ready thumb toward a placard tacked upon the side of the shanty. “The ranger has been here—maybe it was he who left the crumbs.”
“Nothing doing!” declared Rogers. “That paper has been there a month, easy. Don’t you think so, Ned?”
Ned Blake did not answer. He was looking fixedly at the poster from the lower corner of which a sizable scrap had been torn, thus interfering with Dick’s reading, as has been noted. A long moment Ned stared, then reaching into an inside pocket, he brought forth a fragment of paper which he carefully unfolded. Three strides brought him to the cabin where with a quick movement he placed his piece of paper against the torn corner of the fire warning. The ragged edges fitted together perfectly. “You wanted some proof awhile ago, Dave,” he said quietly. “Take a look at this, will you?”
Wilbur descended languidly from the car and joined the group at Ned’s elbow. “Sure it fits,” he drawled as he glanced at the fragment of paper under Ned’s thumb. “It fits perfectly—but what of it?”
Without a word Ned turned the scrap in his fingers and displayed the words scrawled upon its reverse side. Over his shoulder the boys read them eagerly.
“I don’t want company here.
“E. C.”
“Zowie!” yelped Dick Somers. “That’s the very paper we found tacked on the front door of the Coleson house!”
“Gosh a’mighty!” wheezed Tommy Beals. “Let’s dig out o’ here! I don’t like it!”
Charlie Rogers could not restrain a furtive glance over his shoulder at the half-open door of the shanty and even Dave Wilbur’s scoffing was silenced for the moment.