“The grizzly did that, eh?” Clay asked, presently. “It is a wonder he didn’t climb the tree after you?”
“Tried to,” replied the boy, looking Clay over as one looks over the face of a fortune teller who has described an actual event in the past, “tried to, but I dropped matches down on him. They burned his snoot, and he quit. But how is it that you know about that? Did you follow Alex into the wilderness? Who told you about the tree and the bear?”
“When you got the fish out of the oven,” asked Case, as soon as the other had asked his questions, “didn’t you take a turn in the woods?”
“No,” replied Clay, with a quizzical smile, “I haven’t been into the woods at all. Never went farther than the shore.”
“Then you must be Sherlock Holmes, Jr.,” insisted Alex. “The bear came on the stage more than a mile from here, and you couldn’t have seen him from this spot. What is there about me that tells you that I was treed by a bear? Come, now, smarty, tell me!”
“Your clothes!” laughed Clay. “You have no idea that I would lay it to a fish coming up out of the river and biting you, have you?”
“Smarty!” repeated Alex. “If you know so much about what took place in the woods, tell me what has become of Gran. Come on, now.”
“Gran has gone over the rapids!” was Clay’s astonishing reply.
Case and Alex looked their amazement, but did not reply.
“He went past here in a boat, a boat that looked to me like the one we lost, and—”