They had been talking in subdued tones and now they adopted Bob’s suggestion and began to look for a good place to spend the night. They found it after a search of a few minutes. About two hundred feet back in the woods from where Jack had seen the cabin was a thick clump of bushes nearly round and some twenty feet in diameter. Bob forced his way into them and in the center was an open space small to be sure but plenty large enough for them to stretch out at full length.
“I’ll bet we could stay there a month and never be seen,” he told Jack as he emerged.
It was, as Jack said, rather a dry supper they had that night but both agreed that it would not be safe to build a fire.
“I say, Bob, do you suppose they raise any bigger mosquitoes anywhere in the world than these are?” and Jack gave his face a slap.
Bob laughed.
“They’re pretty good sized but a fellow was telling me a few weeks ago about some that he saw up at Moxie Lake. He said that the proprietor of a camp there had six of them trained to ring the dinner bell. It seems that the bell was worked by a rope and at exactly meal time they would all light on the rope and their weight would pull it down. Then when it was down they would fly off and let it swing back again.”
“Some mosquitoes,” Jack laughed, “but I’ll bet it wouldn’t take more than three of these fellows to ring that bell. Lucky we brought along some citronella. And here goes for an application.”
“How about standing guard to-night, Bob?” he asked a few minutes later.
“How about that eye you were going to keep on the cabin?”
“That’s so. But there’s no need of both of us watching at the same time, and to-night I’m going to take first trick.”