“Snakes, I never thought about that!” replied Roy. “Suffering tripe, what a break it would be to get there and find the cows all in the river, drowned! And if that waddy Nick told us about spoke the truth, that may have happened. That will hit dad hard. Our best cows are in that bunch.”
“Aw, forget it,” Teddy returned. “I can’t believe that, Roy. It doesn’t stand to reason. Cows wander all over the lot, and there’s not one chance in a thousand that they’d wait for a landslide to fall on ’em. They may have been in danger when that stranger came through, but that was three or four days ago. They’re just as likely to be a mile away by this time.”
“Hope you’re right,” Roy mused. “And when you look at it that way, I guess you are. The story does sound fishy. Golly! I wish those blamed trees would stop dripping cold water down my neck.”
With a last parting glow, the sun sank out of sight and darkness followed fast. The boys had established themselves some distance back from the river, but its roaring song could be plainly heard through the black night. Like all good campers, they had brought with them a small spade, and now found a use for it. They dug up the soft earth in a trench about their camp until a layer of dry sand made a comfortable sleeping place for them. But all were rather restless, and none of them wished to turn in immediately.
Gradually the voice of the river grew fainter. The torrent was subsiding. Bug Eye and Pop had seated themselves on a log near the fire, and were puffing away on pipes, waiting for sleepiness to come upon them. Roy fed the blaze until he got it going to his satisfaction, then called to Teddy:
“What say we have one more look at the stream before we turn in? I want to see that the canoe is pulled up far enough. Want to come along?”
Teddy stretched himself, and yawned.
“Sure. Might as well. She seems to have gone down quite a bit—you can hardly hear it now. Let’s go.”
Together the two brothers walked through the woods. Neither had a light, but the clouds were nearly dispelled and the moon shone through a faint haze. When they reached the water’s edge Teddy remarked:
“I’ll say it’s gone down. We could almost start now, if we wanted to. I think we could make it all right. But I suppose there wouldn’t be much sense in it.”