“It’s Wolf come back to us again, don’t you see? Good boy, you didn’t mean to desert your new friends, did you? Hey! Keep down there, and don’t eat me alive, please.”
CHAPTER XI
ZEB MAKES GOOD
Since they had been aroused, and the dawn was at hand, there was no use of going back to their blankets again. So the boys finished their simple dressing, and washed up outside the door. Tubby declared the air was as cold as the Arctic regions and it must surely be some degrees below freezing, two assertions that hardly bore out each other.
Zeb Crooks was gotten out of his bunk. Rob had made up his mind to release the other. He now believed the story the repentant guide had so frankly told them, and thought it would be too humiliating for Zeb to be found tied up by a trio of boys, when his employer returned.
But Rob took his time about carrying this out, though he had already obtained the backing of Tubby in the scheme. While the latter was preparing breakfast, and Andy had stepped out, gun in hand, for a little walk around, in hopes of seeing something in the line of game on which he could prove his skill as a marksman, the scout leader walked over to where the big guide sat with his back against the wall.
“You still say, do you, Zeb,” he commenced, “that you meant to stay in the cabin here until Mr. Hopkins came back, and then ask him to overlook your foolishness?”
“I sartin did, youngster,” affirmed the other vehemently, and then adding, “Thar was times when I got plumb skeered, because I hated to think of meetin’ that look in my boss’s eyes. I even considered whether I had ought to stay and take his money agin, arter I’d been so mean. I tried to write a leetle note I was calculatin’ to leave here, in case my nerve give out and I slipped away agin.”
“A note do you say?” demanded Rob quickly. “Did you keep it, Zeb?”
“Shore I did, sir. It’s right here in my pocket, tho’ mebbe arter all I’d a-stayed the thing out, and then I needn’t use it. But I didn’t know, I wasn’t right sartin I could stand for it.”
Rob leaned over, and after fumbling around for a short time managed to find the well-thumbed paper. Evidently Zeb’s education lay mostly in an extensive knowledge of woodcraft and the habits of wild animals, for he could not have spent much time learning to spell, or in applying the ordinary rules of grammar. Rob might have smiled at the primitive product of the big guide’s untrained hand only for the fact that somehow his eyes were strangely blinded while he read.