“Suit yourself,” said Bob, indifferently. “I don’t see what’s the matter with all you fellows, though. Mr. Hampton and Ferdinand’s father couldn’t find any game close at hand, and kept on pushing farther ahead than they had expected to go. That’s all it is. Nothing to worry about.”
Despite his friend’s easy manner, however, Frank could not shake off the feeling of worry that possessed him. Most sensitive of all the boys, it was he who was accustomed to feel first of all the influence of evil close at hand. And, in fact, it had been so in the present case. But he had cloaked his feelings in order not to aggravate Jack’s worry regarding his father.
Now, while Bob lay on his back, his hands under his head, in the hammock, and talked in scattered sentences, Frank sat with his rifle across his knees, on a stool before the tent, with his bright eyes roving over the clearing, searching the trees and underbrush.
Suddenly he leaped to his feet and threw his rifle to his shoulder, while big Bob, startled into wakefulness by the abrupt movement, rolled out of his hammock to the ground.
Then out of the woods stepped a young man clad in a soft white tunic, belted with a golden girdle, wearing shoes of soft untanned leather that came almost to his knees, and having gold bracelets about his arms above the elbow, and anklets of gold about his legs.
“Forebear, Senor,” he commanded, in a rich yet imperious tone. “You are surrounded.”
Archaic though the Spanish was, Frank could understand. Especially, as, following with his gaze the wave of the other’s hand about the clearing, he saw step from the trees a ring of forms similarly clad.