“Oh, I brought them, but the trouble is that I brought both instead of leaving one at home, so we could talk with the folks.”
As Bob was speaking he took the two cases out of his pack and explained how they worked.
“Well, you boys do beat the bugs. And you never said a thing about it. Why, it’s wonderful. Mebby we’ll have a chance to use them before we get back.”
“Quien sabe,” Bob smiled.
The Allagash River flows from the upper end of Long Pond, nearly due north. In places nearly an eighth of a mile wide, it narrows in others to a small space through which the water rushes with the speed of an express train.
They had just finished dinner and were about to clean up when suddenly they heard a loud twang from a thicket near by, followed by a whirring sound as a feathered arrow flew just over their heads and stuck quivering in a white birch.
“What-do-you-know-about-that?” Jack gasped.
“I thought this was the twentieth century,” Rex whispered, as he gazed fascinated at the arrow. “A bit lower and you’d have been scalped, Bob.”
Only Kernertok seemed for the moment to retain his wits. Hardly had the arrow hit the tree than he leaped for the thicket whence it came. But even his swiftness was too slow, for he could find no trace of the shooter. For several minutes he beat about, but at length was forced to acknowledge that whoever had been responsible for the shot had been too quick for him.
Meanwhile Bob had noticed something peculiar about the arrow.