“That was a little too close for comfort,” Bob thought as he followed a few feet behind. “Of course it was no accident, but I hardly think he’ll dare try it again, but it’s dead certain that I’ve got to keep a sharp lookout or he’ll try something else. If he’d hit me I imagine he had it all planned to light out, but when he missed he knew that he’d give himself away if he did, so he decided to face it out.”
By the time his thoughts had reached this point he had struck the camp and making a hasty toilet was soon at Jack’s side eating with, as he told his brother, “a regular Maine woods appetite.”
“Did you get the tree down?” Jack asked between mouthfuls.
“Sure did, and if she don’t scale 800 feet I miss my guess,” Bob replied, helping himself to a big dish of baked beans.
“Didn’t I see you coming in with Larue?” Jack asked a moment later.
“Yes, he waited to trim a tree.” Bob had made up his mind to say nothing even to Jack about the “accident,” knowing that it would only worry him.
“That’s a funny thing for Jean to do. Whence his sudden inclination to extreme industry?” and the boy glanced suspiciously at the Frenchman who was shoveling food into his mouth near the other end of the table.
Bob made no reply and after a moment Jack declared:
“If I’d known he was hanging behind you bet I’d have waited. I don’t like it a little bit.”
The next day was Sunday and the boys had planned to spend the day with an old Indian friend of theirs who lived alone in a little log cabin about eight miles farther up the lake. The Indian’s name was Kernertok, meaning, “he is black,” and, as told in a previous volume, the boys had on two occasions saved his life. Naturally he was intensely fond of them and they in turn thought that there was no one quite like Kernertok. The Indian had taught them much of woodcraft of which he was a master and the boys never tired of listening to his stories of the far north where he had spent his younger days.