“Yes, it was a boy,” explained the late victim, “and the funny part of it all is that I should have happened on to the trap my cousin Archie told me he’d kept set for a month, over near the old logging camp.”
“Archie was the lad’s name, was it?” demanded Zeb quickly. “I remember that Cameron, the guide I used to pull with, and who came up this way last summer to settle, had a lad by that name.”
“Well, Archie Cameron is my full cousin,” explained the stranger. “I’m Donald McGuffey, ye ken, and I live over the line in a Canadian village. I’d been visitin’ my relatives, and was on my way back home when this happened. Now I’m lame, and perhaps I can never get there in time to save them.”
“What’s that?” asked Rob suspiciously. “Are your folks in any danger? Did you get word that they were sick? Tell us what you mean, Donald, and if we can be of any further assistance to you we stand ready to do all we can, for we’re scouts, you know, and it’s our duty to hold out a helping hand every time.”
“Oh! but that’s fine of you!” cried the Canadian boy, shaking with emotion, which, of course, none of the others could as yet begin to understand. “Why, I’m a scout, too, though now I haven’t got my uniform on. But, oh! I wonder if you would dare take it upon yourselves as comrades to stand by me through this terrible thing?”
“Terrible thing, what, Donald?” almost shouted the aroused Andy. “Speak up and let’s know what it’s all about. Why should we hesitate about helping you out? Who’s going to hurt us for sticking to a comrade that’s in distress?”
“Those awful men—they would be furious if they knew any one meant to interfere. Yes, they would even do muckle mair than tie ye up. I believe, in my bones, they are that wrapped up in their diabolical scheme they’d murder anyone who tried to break it up!”
“Speak plainer, Donald,” snapped Rob. “We are wasting precious time while you throw out hints in that way. Tell us everything!”
The Canadian boy stopped limping around. He seemed to straighten up his figure, and they could now see that he was a tall and spare lad, as wiry as they make them over in the country beyond the border.
“It’s just this, ye ken,” he said earnestly. “They mean to blow up the bridge this verra nicht, in time to trap the regular munition freight that goes over at two in the mornin’!”