“I’ll tell you about that when I come to it. Story first, Cal.
“I had just finished my inspection when I heard footsteps of rather uncertain purpose passing round the hovel toward the door, which of course I had closed behind me. As there is only one door to that hovel and it has no windows by which ‘lovers might enter or burglars elope’—that’s wrong end first but it’s no matter—I realized that there was no time to lose. I hurriedly settled down behind a pile of cigar boxes—”
“Their plunder is cigars, then?” asked Dick, forgetting.
“I did not say so,” Tom answered teasingly. “I made no mention of cigars, so far as I can remember. I spoke only of cigar boxes. They might be filled with anything, you know. At any rate your interruption has spoiled the most thrilling part of my narrative, which must now be continued prosaically and without the dramatic fire and fervor I had planned to put into it.
“My concealment was hasty and at best very imperfect. In my haste I forgot to conceal my gun, which stuck up a foot or two above the barrier of boxes that imperfectly hid my person. Fortunately, however, the lame gentleman was too blind drunk even to see double and, as he made no mention of the matter, I refrained from alluding to it.
“Apparently he had entered the hovel with a single purpose, namely, to close his lantern and take it away. With what I cannot help regarding as praiseworthy persistence, he carried out that purpose, giving heed to nothing else. He omitted even to close the door after him, and as the place was without heating apparatus of any kind—except rum for internal combustion—I took my leave as soon as I felt confident that the lame gentleman had either rejoined his comrades or had fallen into dreamless slumber on his way to do so. My next adventure was the head-on collision with Larry in the trail.”
“In my haste I forgot to conceal my gun.”
[Page 126.]
Tom paused, took another bite at the squirrel’s leg he had been eating between sentences, and it seemed necessary to set him going again by means of questions.