“Who are you! This way—this way!”
These were Ree’s words and he yelled them at the top of his voice.
“Get your gun, John, we must find out who that is,” he hurriedly said.
Even as he spoke, and before John could close the door, a heavy figure leaped between them from behind, dodged sidewise out of the light, and in a moment vanished. It was the mysterious visitor.
“Halt, there! Stand, or I’ll put a bullet through you!”
It was Ree who called, but he spoke too late. His words received not the slightest attention, and in another second John succeeded in slamming the door tightly shut, while Theodore Hatch, awake but decidedly bewildered, sat up in bed and stared vacantly.
“What does it mean?”
John dropped almost helplessly upon a stool, completely mystified and not a little alarmed.
“We will have to find out,” said Ree, his lips compressed in determination. “Do you want to go out with me to look around?”
“Well, now, look a-here, Ree, we better see what we can make of this business before ever you put your foot out of the door! It looks a lot to me as though some one had set a trap for us. That owl’s hooting was a man’s voice as plain as anything I ever heard. And that chap who was in here may have been an Indian, but he was not a ‘good Injun,’ as he said, by a long sight; so be reasonable.”