He was no longer sleepy as the cold water had washed the drowsiness from his eyes. But the time passed very slowly and it seemed to the boy that it must be nearly morning when at last his watch told him that it was time to call his brother.
“I wouldn’t do it if he hadn’t made me promise,” he thought as he rose and went slowly toward the big spruce a few feet to his left where Jack had rolled himself in a blanket.
“It’s a shame to wake him,” he thought, but a moment later he was standing as if spellbound for there was no Jack there to waken.
CHAPTER VI
BIG TINY.
“If that don’t beat the Dutch,” Bob muttered as he threw the light from his flash about him.
There was the blanket at the foot of the tree but the boy had disappeared as completely as if the earth had opened and swallowed him. Bob was, for the moment, too dazed even to think coherently. That his brother would go off with no word to him when he knew that he was within a few feet was inconceivable. So far as he could see there was no sign of a struggle which would indicate that the boy had been surprised and carried off while he had been absent.
“All the same I’ll bet it’s the answer,” he thought. “Jack would never have gone off like this and not let me know.”
Then as the seriousness of the situation struck him his heart seemed to stop beating. If the liquor runners had captured the boy there was no telling what they might do to him. That their presence in the woods had alarmed the smugglers there was little doubt.
“There must have been two or three of them or he would have put up a fight that would have left some signs,” he thought as he hunted around for footprints or other signs of the intruders.