“Pee Wee wasn’t with us that time,” explained Bobby. “The rest of the fellows walked down to the station, but Pee Wee came behind in the sleigh with Gid.”
“I had more sense than the rest of the gang,” put in Pee Wee, with a superior air.
“I hear you got a lot of muskrats by stunning them through the ice,” said Skeets. “How did you make out with training them, Mouser?”
“Not very well,” confessed Mouser. “They’re too wild. Gid said I couldn’t train ’em, and I guess he knew what he was talking about.”
The finding of Pat’s father in the little shack, and the story of the hunting lodge, completely buried in the big snowslide, and the great fight they had to get out alive were also subjects of which their audience could not have enough. The listeners kept clamoring for more details and still more, until in sheer self-defense the boys had to call a halt.
“Have a heart, fellows,” said Bobby. “I’m so dead tired that I can hardly keep my eyes open.”
“Yes,” added Fred, “we’ll have all the term to tell you about the rest of it.”
Their hearers had to be content with this, and in a few moments more the boys had undressed and were in bed. But it is safe to say that in their dreams that night enough bears and wildcats were seen to stock a menagerie.
“Say, Fred,” was Bobby’s last remark that night, as he slipped between the sheets, “isn’t it bully to be back in the old dormitory again? Just suppose the tramps had tied us up in that old shack while they slipped out and left us there.”
“Ugh!” shuddered Fred, as he snuggled still deeper in his bed. “It gives me the cold shivers just to think of it.”