"Get up!" shouted Tad. "Somebody's standing on my neck."
"Yes, and—and you've pushed my face into the desert," came the muffled voice of Chunky Brown.
Laughing and all talking at once, the knot was slowly untied. Two of them grabbed the fat boy under the arms, while a third got between the lad's feet and picked them up, much as one would the handles of a wheelbarrow. In that manner they triumphantly carried Stacy back to the camp.
Reaching his tent, they threw the fat boy into his bed.
The tall, gaunt figure of the Professor appeared suddenly at the tent entrance. Some of the boys darted by him, the others crawling out under the sides of the tent, all making a lively sprint for their own quarters.
"Young men, the very next one who raises a disturbance in this camp to-night is going to get a real old-fashioned trouncing. Not having any slipper, I'll use my shoe. Do you hear?"
Not a voice answered him, but as he strode away the moon-like face of Stacy Brown might have been seen peering out at him. Quiet reigned in the camp of the Pony Rider Boys for several hours after that. Yet they were destined not to pass the night without a further disturbance, though the Professor did not use his shoe to chastise the noisy ones.
It lacked only a few hours to daylight when the second interruption occurred. And when it arrived it was even more startling than had been the fat boy's chase of the cowardly coyotes.
There was a sudden sound of hoof-beats.
"Ki-yi! Ki-yi!" shrieked a chorus of voices.