When Jack, listening, caught the same sound, he turned upon his companion with a serious expression on his face.
“Let’s kick off our skates and hang our packs up in the crotch of this tree, Tom,” he said.
“Then you expect to investigate, and find out what it means, do you?”
“We’d feel pretty mean if we went on our way like the Levite in the old story of the Good Samaritan,” remarked Jack, busily disengaging his bundle of fish which Abe had done up in a piece of old bagging.
“I’m the last one to do such a thing,” asserted Tom, “only I chanced to remember that there are some tough boys up here somewhere—Hank and his crowd—and I was wondering if this could be a trick to get us to put our fingers in a trap.”
Jack chuckled, and held up his gun.
“We ought to be able to take care of ourselves with this,” he told his chum. 127
“Right you are, Jack! So let’s be on the jump. There! that sounded like a big groan, didn’t it? Somebody’s in a peck of trouble. Maybe a wood-chopper has had a tree fall on him or cut his foot with his axe, and is bleeding badly.”
“Just what I had in mind,” remarked the other, as they started into the shrubbery.
The groans continued; therefore, the two scouts had no difficulty in going directly to the spot. In a few minutes Tom clutched his chum’s sleeve and pointed directly ahead.