He raised his rifle, and, pointing it straight in the air, fired two shots, and then, after a brief interval, two more.
"The sound of that'll carry a long way," he explained, "and that means that you're both found. The other fellows who are searchin' for you will quit lookin', now, and come into Long Lake. If I'd fired just two shots, and hadn't fired the second two, that would have meant that one of you was found, and they'd have kept right on a-lookin' fer the other. I'll walk along with you now, an' I guess that varmint won't bother you no more. If he does—"
He patted his rifle with a gesture that spoke more plainly than words could have done.
"Tell me all about it as we go along," he said. "I guess maybe there'll be some work for us to do after we all get together—runnin' those gypsies out. They're a bad lot, but this is the fust time they ever done anythin' around here that give us a real chance to get even with them. We've suspected them of doin' lots of things, but a deer can't tell you who killed him out o' season, 'specially when all you find of the deer is a little skin and bones."
He listened admiringly as Bessie told her story. At the tale of Lolla's treachery he laughed.
"They're all tarred with the same brush," he said. "One's as bad as another."
And when he heard of the trick by which Dolly had worked on the superstitious fears of Lolla and Peter his merriment knew no bounds, and he absolutely refused to keep on the trail until Dolly had given him a demonstration of just how she had managed it.
"Well, by Godfrey!" he said, when she had thrown her voice far overhead, and once so that it seemed to come from just above his shoulder. "Don't that beat the Dutch! I don't wonder you skeered 'em! You'd have had me goin', I guess, an' I ain't no chicken, nor easy to skeer, neither. You two certainly done a smart job gettin' away from them."
And so, when they reached Long Lake, the girls and the guides, who had scattered all over the woods searching for them, agreed, when they straggled in, one party after another. Eleanor Mercer was one of the first to return, and when she had finished proving her gratitude for their safe return, she turned a laughing face toward the chief guide.
"Do you know the thing that pleases me best about this, Andrew?" she asked him.