Laura listened to their comments, but said nothing. She believed she could make a good guess as to who the young man was; but she was keeping that secret to herself.
When she and the three boys rejoined their companions down stream, they had enough to tell about the adventure without declaring the identity of the young man with the gun. It was exciting enough to have had Short and Long almost “chawed up” by a savage dog, as Lance expressed it.
“And this useless piece of goods,” he added 177 taking Purt by the collar, “made a foozle—right off the reel! I could have scared that big bully easily enough if Purt had kept still about his old revolver being no good.”
“I don’t care,” complained Purt. “The revolver would have been all right if you hadn’t taken that screw out and thrown it away.”
“And you’d likely shot yourself—or somebody else—by this time.”
“No I wouldn’t,” said Purt, gloomily.
“How do you know?” asked Chet.
“Why—I find that when I bought cartridges for that pistol I got thirty-eights—and the pistol is a forty-five!”
The whole crowd laughed at that. Purt Sweet really was too funny for anything.
They got another good laugh on him before they went back to the island. There was a squatter’s cabin near the bank of the brook and they trooped up there for a drink of cool milk, for the woman had two cows and was willing to sell the milk to them, right from her log buttery.