He was so taken up with his own affairs that he quite missed the meaning glance that passed between Court Parker and Bob Gibson as they fastened their painter to the stern of the power-boat. He thought nothing, either, of the fact that they were first ashore, where, hastening to remove from under one of the seats a medium-sized bait-box covered with seaweed, they disappeared behind the cook-shack.
But later on, an uncomfortable suspicion came to him that there was something in the wind. Approaching the cook-shack, where a crowd was occupied in breaking up shells and extracting crab-meat for supper, he noticed Parker, Sanson, and Tompkins giggling and whispering with heads close together. As he came up they stopped abruptly, but after supper he saw them again, clustered in a group with Gibson and Bennie Rhead, and caught a grinning glance from the latter that deepened his suspicion.
“I’ll bet they’re up to some trick,” he said to himself.
Uneasily, he kept a sharp lookout, determined that they should not catch him napping. But oddly enough, the joke, whatever it was, seemed to subside, and for all his watchfulness Vedder failed to detect any more suspicious confabs during the evening.
Nevertheless, he remained on guard, especially after dark. He did not stray far from headquarters without peering about for such pitfalls as taut ropes, water-pails, and the like. At the council-fire he selected his place with especial care, and saw that no one approached from behind without his knowing it. But the evening passed uneventfully, and when he had reached the tent in safety and was undressing by the light of the single lantern, he decided he must have been worrying to no purpose.
“Guess I was wrong after all,” he thought, tying the pajama-strings about his ample waist. “My, but bed’s going to feel good!”
If there was one thing Vedder took pains about, it was in the arrangement of his blankets. To avoid the unpleasant exposure of toes he had worked out an elaborate system of folds and safety-pins until the combination resembled a sleeping-bag more than anything else. It was his habit to attend to this immediately after supper so that at bedtime there need be no shivery delay in getting fixed for the night. This evening he climbed ponderously to his perch, inwardly congratulating himself on his forethought, for the others, chattering busily on the day’s doings, were only beginning to spread out their blankets.
“It pays to be systematic,” he thought complacently, and thrust his legs between the warm folds with a luxurious sigh of content.
An instant later a howl of terror resounded through the camp, followed by a convulsive movement of Vedder’s legs and body which disrupted the neat arrangement in a flash. Dale Tompkins, sitting on the edge of the lower bunk, had no time even to roll aside before the fat boy, still gurgling with fright, landed on him with a crash that shook the tent.