“Prowlers,” he repeated, over and over again. “I don’t understand it. Why should there be any more danger from prowlers now than at any other time? O!” he added, an idea suddenly occurring to him. “Perhaps they think that Don and Egan will try to work their way back to camp this afternoon. Well, if they do, they’ll not get by me.”
So saying, Bert settled his musket firmly on his shoulder and began pacing his beat, casting suspicious and searching glances now and then toward the bushes on the opposite side of the creek.
When Bert first learned that his brother and Egan had deserted the camp he was almost overwhelmed with surprise and mortification. He supposed they had committed a serious offence, one that would be sure to bring disgrace and punishment upon them, and took it so much to heart that the boys were obliged to explain matters to him. They assured him that the deserters had not lowered their standing or forfeited the good-will of the teachers, and that all they had to do to make heroes of themselves was to outrun or outwit the parties that were sent in pursuit of them, and make their way back to camp without being caught.
“They are heroes already,” said one of the students, with great enthusiasm, “for didn’t they swim the creek during their flight? That’s something that none of the fellows ever did before. I wish they might get back all right, but the superintendent has sent Mack after them, and he’s a bad one. He’s bound to catch them.”
This seemed to be the opinion of all the students; and consequently when Corporal Mack returned to camp and reported that he had found Don Gordon at the show disguised as a country boy, and had actually had his hand on his collar, and Don had broken away and beaten him in a fair race, notwithstanding the fact that he was incumbered by heavy boots that were many sizes too large for him—when the corporal reported all this, the boys were not a little surprised.
“It would have made you laugh to see him,” said the corporal, who had the greatest respect for the boy who had so neatly outwitted him. “He looked and acted so much like a born simpleton that I couldn’t make up my mind that it was Don Gordon until he revealed his identity by walking like a field-negro. Then I knew in a moment that he was the fellow I wanted, and I—well, I didn’t get him, but I would have got him if I hadn’t been recalled. He had a suit of Asa Peter’s clothes on, and I had Asa’s house guarded so that he couldn’t get his uniform.”
Why he had been recalled so soon, and at a time too when he had the deserters “just where he wanted them,” the corporal could not imagine; and neither could the rest of the students understand why their liberty had been stopped so suddenly. On the day following that on which the seven-elephant railroad show had pitched its tent in Bridgeport all passes had been refused, and since that time no one had been outside the gates except the mess-cooks. They were permitted to go to the spring three times every day, and they always went under guard too. Such a regulation had never been established before, and the students were at a loss to know the meaning of it.
“It’s all Gordon’s fault and Egan’s,” said one of the boys. “They have shown that a fellow can desert under the eye of a sentry, if he sees fit to do so, and the superintendent is afraid that some of us will follow their example. That’s the reason he sends a guard with the mess-cooks when they go to the spring after water.”
“There’s where you are mistaken,” said one of the first-class sergeants, in reply. “We are in the enemy’s country——”
The boys who were standing around laughed uproariously, and turning on their heels, walked away. They had heard quite enough of such talk as that, and wanted to know some good reason for the stopping of their liberty.