“I wonder if they will find the boys asleep when they get to the Rambler?” Frank asked, anxiously, after a time. This was no time for anger between them.
“They surely won’t!” answered Case. “If they do find the boys asleep they’ll find Captain Joe there with the goods I Say,” the boy added, “I’ve a good notion to take a hop-step-and-jump for the Rambler. I could get there before they did, and make it a sure thing that the boys would not be asleep. I believe it is worth trying.”
“Ugly would put half a dozen bullets into you before you got a dozen feet away,” Frank objected. “See! He’s suspicious of us now.”
“He hears something in the forest back of us,” Case observed. “I wonder if he will shoot if I turn around to see what it is? It might be a wild animal, you know.”
“Watch him! Watch Ugly!”
Frank uttered the cry as he arose to his feet and pointed with one hand toward the guard, now also standing on his feet, the gun lying on the ground. There was a look of terror on the man’s ugly face which would have been comical if it had not been so expressive of abject horror. The fellow’s eyes “hung out like a hat pin,” as Case afterwards expressed it, and his mouth dropped agape, as if there were no strength in the fellow to control the action of his jaws.
“For the love of Madge!” cried Frank. “What does the man see?”
“I’m not going to stop to answer that question!” Case replied. “It’s me for the Rambler!”
Ugly did not even notice the lads as they started away. He stood perfectly still for an instant, then turned and ran, diving head first into the thicket as a swimmer dives into an oncoming breaker. Case and Frank paused by the fire and looked back, to discover, if possible, the danger from which the fellow had flown. What they saw was a face and a hand of fire, lifting from the ground, behind the tree, pointing and nodding in the direction Ugly had taken.