“And you didn’t hear a thing?”
Bob’s face turned red.
“I guess I might as well fess up,” he said. “The fact is I went to sleep at the switch so to speak. I don’t know how it happened but I was sitting there with my back against a tree and the first thing I knew I didn’t know anything. When I woke up it was morning. I’m mighty sorry, but—”
“No apologies are necessary,” Jack interrupted. “I came mighty near to doing the same thing and it probably wouldn’t have made a bit of difference if you had kept awake. I fancy the old cabin would have vanished just the same.”
“That’s not the point. It’s certainly got me worried to think that I couldn’t keep awake. Suppose I’d been on a post in time of war and—”
“And suppose the cow had jumped over the moon,” Jack interrupted. “If anything had depended on it you’d have kept awake fast enough. But, Bob, this thing has got me dippy. This is the twentieth century and log cabins aren’t in the habit of vanishing into thin air. If this was back in fairy times it wouldn’t be surprising but now, well, all I got to say is that it’s got me bughouse.”
“Bughouse is right,” Bob agreed, a serious look on his face. “But what’s the answer?”
“Guess we’ll have to wait till we get more data, as Professor Sharp used to say, before we can answer that question.”
For more than an hour the two boys searched the immediate vicinity hoping to obtain some clue to the mystery. But their search was all in vain. So far as they were able to discover no one had ever been there before and finally they were obliged to give it up.
“Well, anyhow, I guess we’ll be able to build a fire and have a hot breakfast,” Bob declared as they slowly made their way back to where they had left their packs.