“Hear! hear!” said Phil Towns. “And as the sun has set already I for one wouldn’t care how soon you decided to do that stunt.”
“Oh! we ought to be good for another hour or so anyway, Phil,” Tom told him, at which the other only grunted and struck manfully out again.
As evening closed in about them, the shadows began to creep out of the heavy growth of timber by which the skaters were surrounded.
“Look! look! a deer!” shrieked Sandy Griggs, suddenly. Thrilled by the cry the others looked ahead just in time to see a flitting form disappear in the thick fringe of shrubbery that lined one side of the creek.
CHAPTER XV
TOLLY TIP AND THE FOREST CABIN
“Oh! that’s too bad!” exclaimed Spider Sexton, “I’ve been telling everybody we’d taste venison of our own killing while off on this trip, and there the first deer we’ve glimpsed gives us the merry ha-ha!”
“Rotten luck!” grumbled Jud Elderkin. “And me with a rifle gripped in my fist all the time. But I only had a glimpse of a brown object disappearing in the brush, and I never want to just wound a deer so it will suffer. That’s why I didn’t fire when I threw my gun up.”