“It’s mine,” said the stranger.
“Well, I must see it and know how you came by it. Let go.”
The man still held fast to the object, whatever it was, and Frank, seizing it with both hands wrenched it out of his grasp, jerking off the blankets at the same time, and bringing to light a Maynard rifle—the mate to his own. It was so much like it, in fact, that when the rifles were first purchased by the cousins, they could never tell them apart until they had had their names engraved on them. Frank was so well acquainted with the weapon that he would have known it had he seen it in Asia. He turned it up, and there was Archie’s name on the butt-plate. He read the name aloud, and the boys flocked about him with exclamations of wonder, each one taking the rifle into his own hands and giving it a good looking over. It was so unexpected, this finding of Archie’s property in the possession of a stranger, that they wanted the evidence of their own eyes before they could believe it.
“Now I’ll just tell you what’s a fact,” said Perk, who was the first to speak, “you’ve been up to something. Where did you get it?”
“Hand out the cartridges,” said Frank, finding that there was an empty shell in the chamber of the rifle.
“What’s that thar stickin’ out thar?” exclaimed old Bob, suddenly.
Bob pushed away the stranger’s leg and snatched up a belt containing two revolvers. They were Eugene’s, and every one about the fire recognised them.
“You’ve been up to something, I tell you,” said Perk.
“Hand out the cartridges,” repeated Frank.