“I suppose those brats are going to scare everything within five miles now,” muttered Jack, as they watched the Boy Scouts vanish into the woods. “They’re a fine bunch of hunters. I’ll bet there isn’t one of them could hit a barn door if he were locked in.”
“That’s right,” muttered Freeman Hunt, in a surly tone. “Young muckers, I owe them a long score, and they’ll have to settle it before long.”
“Yes, they did kind of knock you down and then rub it in, didn’t they?” grinned Bill Bender, fumbling with the breech of his gun.
Freeman did not relish this reference to his recent troubles, and an angry flush rose to his cheeks as he burst out:
“That’s the worst thing they ever did. I’ll get even with them if it’s the last thing I do. I haven’t thought up anything yet, but I will, and don’t you forget it. I hate them all.”
“Well, no use letting them have all the sport,” rejoined Jack Curtiss. “Let’s cut into the wood here, and then the old dog can nose up all the game they drive this way.”
By mid-afternoon Rob found himself alone, in a small clearing, surrounded with scrub oak and sea-stunted pines—a vegetation peculiar to that region.
He paused to listen for some sound of his companions, and, as he did so, he heard, quite near at hand, as it seemed, a crashing sound in the brush.
“That you, fellows?” he called out; but there was no answer, and in place of the crackling of the brush there was dead silence. Somewhere, far off, he could hear the steady blows of a woodsman’s axe, but that was the only interruption to the silence of the winter’s afternoon.
“Maybe it was a deer,” reflected Rob, as no answer came to his call. “They get off that millionaire Grogan’s place once in a while. Guess that must have been one.”