“No, I’ll cool off first. You go ahead. I’ll go up on the bridge and show you where the gun most likely fell.” He gathered a handful of small stones and standing on the bridge, began to throw them into the water, marking off a small circle that extended from the edge of the falls to the shore. “It ought to be inside that.”
“All right. Here goes,” called Bad as he began wading away from the bank. “U-u-gh! it’s cold. So deep,” he added, ducking himself under to the chin, pretending he had found a step-off—to come up to his waist a minute later.
“Call me if you find it,” Hal said, after lighting his lantern with a match, Boy Scout style being too slow just then. “I’ll be with you in a few minutes.”
He disappeared within the cave, and Bad continued wading out toward the edge of the fall, feeling for the gun with his toes. This was an easy matter, as the bottom was a firm sort of sand-mud, smooth and gently sloping. The water deepened till it was up to his neck, but that was all. Out under the falls it was doubtless many times deeper, but here the thin trickle from above had not worn any hole.
“I guess I’ll cut in toward the bridge,” he said to himself, “and then work over along the bank.” As he came under the bridge he stood there a moment, holding to one of the timbers, for at this point the undertow from the falls was rather strong.
As he stood there his mischievous spirit prompted him to play a trick on Hal. Wouldn’t it be a lark to climb up under the bridge and stretch himself out along the timbers and wait there for Hal? What would he think when he came out and found no Bad in the water? He had laughed at Bad’s scare when the plank tipped, that night when Kenyon Cave was discovered. Here was a good chance to get even.
So Bad wormed himself up one of the posts, and after a good deal of squirming found himself a firm and fairly comfortable resting place where two bracing timbers formed a V-shaped bed. Right above him was a large knothole, within a few inches of his eyes. He lay there and waited some time, his only view the tumbling water just beneath, and above, a knothole sight of the cliff and a patch of blue sky.
Once he was tempted to call, but waited. Then, above him, on the boards of the bridge, he heard a quiet footfall. It sounded like bare feet; perhaps that was why Hal had been so long—he had stopped to undress. The footfalls ceased. Bad fancied he heard a curious sniffing noise, that kept up till it got on his nerves. What could Hal be doing that would make such a funny noise! Bad tried to look through the knothole. Only blue sky and gray cliff could be seen. But still that sniff-sniff kept up.
Putting his mouth to the knothole, he drew in his breath and then “Wow!” he shouted.
But the answer was not what he expected. A low snarl came in reply, and the snarl was too animal-like to have come from Hal. Bad almost fell from his perch in his sudden fright. Again he put his eye to the hole, but jerked back with a scream. A cold, damp something had touched his face, and that something he knew instinctively was the muzzle of an animal.