“Oh, that’s different! I didn’t know that was what you were doing. I thought you were calling hogs or selling peanuts!” called Frank, while Lanky swung the gun quickly from his shoulder as if he might bring it up to kill such an insulting speaker.
“Be down in a minute!” called Frank again, as he slammed the window to the bottom and disappeared into his room.
In a few minutes the two boys were together on the street, each with his rifle, headed for the homes of other boys.
Paul Bird, Ralph West and Buster Billings were sought and found, and when each had his rifle on his shoulder, the five young fellows started back toward the main road north.
“We ought to have some good target practice this morning,” said Frank, while the boys, all bunched together, made along the road. “Camping up at Old Moose Lake is going to call for some regular shooting, and too much practice isn’t enough.”
“Guess we’re the lucky boys,” remarked Lanky, after they had gotten to the edge of town and were approaching the woods in the rolling land beyond Columbia.
One of the boys asked him the “why” for the remark.
“Well, if Frank hadn’t been out West just when he was and if he hadn’t been where he was when we found dad’s treasure in the hills, and if dad hadn’t given Frank the Rocket, the best little old motor boat ever born, and if we hadn’t been coming down the Harrapin River just at the time we heard the cries of Mrs. Parsons and——”
“Say, listen!” Paul Bird interrupted the long-drawn out sentence of Lanky Wallace. “Are you making a speech or something?”
“—and,” continued Lanky, paying no heed to the interruption, “if we hadn’t seen that auto leave there, if we hadn’t luckily stumbled on to the rowboat taking the stolen stuff to Jed Marmette’s, if we hadn’t followed up the lead and seen old Jed stealing some of the stuff and if we hadn’t broken down that night, run out of gas, when we raced to Coville, all might have been different about this camping party.”