“Hard to tell. We’ll just slide by, quiet like, and minding our own business. Those crazy galoots are making such an uproar that they couldn’t hear a crack of thunder outside.”
“Let’s hope so. I don’t crave to fall in the hands of big Pat and his gang of hoodlums.”
Gazing ahead, in the brilliant moonlight, they were relieved to see that there was not a solitary soul outside the noisy tavern; and it appeared, much to their satisfaction, that they would be able to get by the dangerous dive without being molested.
“Looks like old Lady Luck is with us,” said Ben happily, as they drew up within a few yards of the open door.
When they had come almost opposite the door, however, a runty, wizen-faced fellow, dressed in deerskin breeches and a cotton shirt open at the throat, shot out of the place as if propelled from a catapult. As he reached the outside, he suddenly tripped and pitched forward. And lucky he was; for just as he did so, a glass bottle sailed over his head and plopped into the shallow swamp with a kerplunk that sounded like a diving frog.
The runty fellow was up in a flash.
“Watcha trip me fer?” he demanded of Tom Gordon, who had been very nearly bowled over.
“I didn’t trip you,” answered the boy quietly.
“Skeered to ’fess up, eh?” he leered, doubling up his fists ominously.
“Listen lunkhead,” repeated Tom, somewhat nettled by the chap’s manner, “I say that I didn’t trip you.”