“Listen, Rob, and keep very still,” said Andy softly. “There’s some one outside the door trying to get in. I heard him try the latch and give a push; and I think he’s gone to prowling around, trying each of the wooden shutters over the windows in turn.”
CHAPTER IX
THE MAN OUTSIDE
“Sure you weren’t dreaming, Andy?” whispered Rob, in turn, as, having listened for a brief time, he failed to catch any unusual sound.
“Not a bit of it,” the other assured him. “I sat up and made certain of it before crawling out of my bunk. I tell you there is somebody outside there, and he’s doing his best to get in, too.”
The night wind was sighing through the pinetops, Rob noticed. Could Andy’s imagination, excited by some dream, have conceived the idea that a would-be intruder was “fiddling” at the door, and endeavoring to find ingress? Rob was still undecided, but at the same time he considered it the part of wisdom to get out of his bunk and slip his feet into a pair of warm moccasins he always carried with him.
It was almost dark inside the long bunk cabin. The fire had died down, and even if there were still smouldering embers present the wooden screen hid them from sight.
Rob now became aware of the fact that Andy clutched something in his hands. The touch of cold metal told him it was a gun. This would indicate that the other fully believed what he asserted, and that some strange man was even then about to force an entrance into the cabin, possibly under the belief that no one was occupying the building at the time.
“There, did you hear that?” came again from the aroused Andy. “He’s trying one of the window shutters. Rob, I remember that several of them are kind of loose. When he strikes one of those he can get it open easily enough, and then what’s to hinder him pushing in the sash?”
“Well, there is something moving around out there, I do believe,” muttered Rob.
“Oh, I wonder if it could be Wolf come back!” said an awed voice close to them.