“Of course he may have had his reasons,” admitted Mr. Dalton, “but I can’t guess at any to make him leave so quickly and so secretly. It’s just as if he were afraid.”
“Maybe he is afraid,” admitted Rick, “I mean afraid of getting us in trouble. He isn’t afraid for himself, but some danger might be hanging over him and he didn’t want us mixed up in it.”
“Oh, nonsense!” laughed Mr. Dalton. “I guess you Boy Scouts have been playing too many Indian games.”
“No,” said Rick, for he and Chot were now full-fledged Scouts, “we only do the best things the real Indians once did. Of course some of them were mysterious, and Uncle Tod may know about them. But I would like to know what all this means.”
“So would I,” agreed his mother with a sigh. “I hope nothing happens to Uncle Tod.”
“I reckon he can look out for himself,” said her husband, and Rick murmured:
“He sure can!”
The family agreed that nothing was to be said to outsiders concerning the strange leaving of Uncle Tod. If questions were asked they were to be evaded, or it could be said, with perfect truth, that Mr. Belmont (his name was Toddingham Belmont) had gone away for a few days.
“And when that telegram comes we’ll know more about it,” suggested Rick. Meanwhile he and Ruddy pursued their usual line of activities about Belemere, going swimming, fishing, crabbing or off on joyous excursions in the fields and woods.
And then, one day, the expected message came. Uncle Tod had been gone nearly a week, without a word as to his whereabouts when, one afternoon, the colored boy from the telegraph office, riding his ramshackle and rattling wheel, stopped at the Dalton home.