Crack! Crack! Bang! Bang! Four shots rang out, as all the boys had positions and had their rifles and shotguns in line. The other two wolves dropped where they had turned. At this the rest of the wolf pack turned and went howling away through the timber.
Just then three human forms came from out of the shadow of the tree, Jeek, Fallon and Carey.
“Say, young fellow,” stammered Jeek as he joined the group standing around the three slain animals, “I’m much obliged to you boys for coming. I was freezing to death up in that tree and I didn’t know whether them animals was going to climb up and get us or not!”
He held out his hand to Frank, who took it in the most friendly way, realizing that Jeek was really thankful and grateful to the boys for what they had done.
“You owe your thanks to Snadder and Blinky,” he said to Jeek. “They came to the camp and got us out. My, but it is cold down in this valley!”
They moved each of the animals with their feet, to be certain they were dead. One of them was not quite gone, but it was gasping, and Lanky stood off to fire a fatal shot into its head to put it out of its suffering.
“What are timber wolves doing in these woods?” Frank could not refrain from asking the question, even though he felt the others knew no more about the answer than himself.
“I’ll tell you where they’re from!” Jeek exclaimed as they stood looking down at the animals, thinking over Frank’s question. “They’re from a circus! Remember that circus that had a fire about a year ago down at Bellport? Frey’s circus? Remember some of its animals got away and they never did get all of them back?”
Frank then recalled, as did the other boys, the furor which was caused at the time when announcement was made that wild animals had broken loose from their cages when a fire had destroyed one of the tents of the circus.
“As I recall it,” Frank said, “one of the keepers said he opened some of the cages rather than see the animals burn to death.”