“I guess I’m going to that dance!” snorted the fat boy belligerently, but when the others laughed he grinned a bit too.
In the end they all went except Lieutenant Wingate, who had business letters to write. He wrote steadily for half an hour, then paused in his work to consider some question further. As he sat there a sharp whistle attracted his attention.
“That’s a signal,” he thought.
When the whistle came a second time Hippy answered it in kind, then crept silently over a rise of ground toward the sound.
“What’s the matter? They watchin’ you?” came a voice so close and unexpected that Hippy had hard work to suppress an exclamation.
“Yes,” he said after a brief silence, during which he drew back a little. “How are things?”
“They’re fixed. They—Say, who are you?”
Without waiting for a reply, the man turned and ran, disappearing in the darkness. Hippy tried to follow, but it was a hopeless chase.
“Something queer there, but, after all, I don’t know that anything is actually wrong,” reasoned the young man, and went back to his letter writing.
It was some time later that Jim Badger came into camp, and Hippy looked up to say: