Again Horace intervened. "What's all the row?" he queried, strolling up to the group at the log.
"I found a good sized stick cut, up there in the woods," Kingdon told him. "This hatchet that Pudge borrowed of us lay beside the raw stump. That'll never do, you know—cutting well grown saplings is a crime in the eyes of the lumber company."
"You never said a word about it before, King," Hicks observed. "Thought we all understood there was to be no green wood cut."
"We do," Horace said, his eyes narrowing.
"I never did it!" Pudge exclaimed again.
"I'll ask Joe. He's the only one that's likely to have used the hatchet," Horace said grimly. "You know how these Indians look at things, Kingdon. To such fellows a rule is only made to break."
"I wonder," thought Kingdon, "if that isn't pretty nearly the attitude of everybody else?"
To tell the truth, he was puzzled. Joe Bootleg, Kirby, Pudge, even Horace Pence himself, was under suspicion in Rex's mind. As for Ben Comas, sour as the chap appeared, somehow Kingdon did not consider him in any way connected with the affairs of the sapling-lever or the bowlder that had rolled down the hill.
It was much too wet that day to get in any baseball practice, but the following afternoon the two parties of campers met on the field. Pence and his followers seemed rather more friendly than before. The two parties of boys mingled and spent an hour in a lively scrub game. Kingdon learned on this occasion that Horace was something of a batter.
"Over the fence and out, boy," the backstop said, grinning at Pence cheerfully. "Some wallop that. We've a real field at the Hall, and that fly would have gone pretty near to the lake. Old Jerry Lane never did better when he got a real clout at the sphere, eh, Red?"