Lanky was quite right in this. The boys had planned a camping party at this autumn season, and Mrs. Parsons, the wealthy widow just above the city of Columbia who had been robbed of her jewels and silver, was so grateful to Frank and his friends for what they had done that she had offered them the use of the late Mr. Parsons’ camp at Old Moose Lake for their camping expedition when she learned they had made plans for one.
In the preceding volume, called “Frank Aden and His Motor Boat,” is told the story of the manner in which Frank and his boy friends had come into the activities of the robbery in time to catch the thieves redhanded and also to find for Mrs. Parsons her jewels and the silverware, most of which had come to her from her ancestors and those of her husband, who had died only two years before.
It so happened that Mrs. Parsons had accepted some questionable rumors for fact and had accused the boys of knowing more than they did. Her chagrin after the disclosure and her gratitude over the good work done by Frank Allen, Lanky Wallace, Paul Bird and Ralph West, caused her to reward them first with a very, very delightful picnic at her country home, a palatial spot facing the Harrapin River. It was following this picnic that, hearing the boys had been planning a camping expedition for the autumn season, she graciously tendered to Frank and his friends the use of a beautiful camp which had been the pride of Mr. Parsons in his lifetime, an offer the boys had cheerfully accepted.
“It was mighty good of Mrs. Parsons to offer us the camp up at Old Moose Lake,” said Frank, in reply to Lanky’s humorous recital. “She says it is stocked with food and she said she was going to order some more sent there, so we’ll have plenty of chance to keep alive, if eating is the only thing we have to do to keep alive.”
“No,” said Lanky, very sagely shaking his head in the negative, “we can’t keep alive unless we bring down fourteen deer, a couple of hundred pickerel, and——”
“And kill yourself getting it all home,” laughed Paul Bird.
By this time the chums had come to the grove where they proposed to hold their target practice, and Frank, with his usual sense of safety, led the way from the road almost a quarter of a mile, coming at last to a ravine which broadened out at one point to a great bowl, its sides of rock and sand.
“We can set up the target over that bed of sand,” and Frank pointed to one stratum of fine sand which broke out in the side of the ravine. “That will allow the bullets to imbed in something soft and we won’t take any chances on their glancing off.”
“That’s provided any one hits the target—except me, of course, I know my shots will all hit it all right——”
Once again Lanky Wallace was telling the other boys what he was going to do, joking with them.