"I judge you didn't have any luck."
"We got close to one of the scamps," muttered Tom, "whom Dick seems to have hit on the heel with a stone, but he slipped away from us under the trees."
"It's only half an hour to dawn," yawned Dave, looking at his watch. "We can turn in, now, I guess, for the rascals must be about through with the guessing match they've put up for us."
"We could turn in now," suggested Danny Grin. "We don't have to go to sleep, you know, but we could lie in our blankets and talk the time away until dawn. The campfire will keep going until after daylight comes on."
That seemed rather a sensible course. Dick nodded, and all hands, after Darry had thrown a few more sticks on the fire, went into the tent, undressed, donned pajamas and slipped in under a single thickness of blanket apiece, and lay there talking.
Yet it proved to be a case of gape and yawn. One after another their eyes closed and more regular breathing started.
Dick Prescott was the last one to drop off. Yet he had barely more than lost himself in slumberland when there came a blast so close at hand that, to the boys, it seemed as though they must have been blown from their cots.
"That was right up toward the road!" panted Dave Darrin, leaping from his cot barefooted and clad only in pajamas. "Don't stop to dress. Come on! Chase 'em!"
"Go as far as you like!" chuckled Dick, stopping to pull on his shoes and fasten them, as did most of the others. Hazelton went only to the doorway of the tent, but Danny Grin followed Darrin, keeping at the latter's heels.
Prescott and Reade were hardly sixty seconds later in heading up the slope toward the road, Greg and Harry remaining at the camp.