“You certainly deserve a great deal of credit,” said Captain Putnam. “Just the same, had I known the tiger was still at large, I should have kept you at the Hall.”
Later on, the circus authorities were communicated with, and from them Rossmore Ford obtained the skin of the beast, and had it prepared, with the head on, for a rug; and it is in his mansion on the floor to this day.
The cadets of Putnam Hall were now getting ready for an outing to last several days. Before winter set in, the captain wished to give them a taste of camp life, and so decided to make a march to a beautiful valley some twenty miles away. Here the boys were to go into camp for two nights, returning on the next day.
“That is what I’ll like!” exclaimed Stuffer Singleton. “No lessons to study. Only to march, get up an appetite, and eat!”
“Especially eat!” said Andy. “That hits Stuffer every time.”
“We’re to go on army rations,” put in Pepper, with a wink at his chums. “Pork and beans, and hard-tack.”
“No!” exclaimed Stuffer in alarm. “Who told you that?”
“Why, everybody knows it,” put in Andy.
“We’ll see that you get all the hard-tack you want, Stuffer,” went on Pepper. “The captain won’t want you to go hungry, you know.”
“I don’t want any hard-tack,” growled Stuffer, in disgust. “I thought we’d get the same kind of feed as we get here.” The march had suddenly lost all of its interest for him.