“Poor old Stephen!” she murmured. “You were hurt all the time and never said a word.”
Slowly he opened his eyes and looked at Bab in a sort of shamefaced way.
“I suppose the tramp got away?” he asked.
“Who cares,” replied his friend, “if you aren’t hurt?”
“Oh, I’m not,” he answered. “I was only winded. That big fellow gave me a blow, just as you shot the pistol off, that nearly did for me. But I thought I could keep up until the others came back. I knew I couldn’t go for the water. How did you get the pistols?”
By the time Bab had finished her story the others had come up with the water.
“It’s just as well the tramp has gone,” said Alfred, when he had heard what had happened. “I don’t believe we could have managed him and Jimmie, too.”
They bathed Jimmie’s face and wrists with the cold spring water, and it was a battered and disconsolate young man who finally opened his one good eye on the company.
“I think,” said Stephen, “we had better put these pistols back where they were. If they are gone, the robber will take alarm and we’ll never catch him. I don’t think we’ll be attacked by those tramps any more to-day. They’ll never imagine we have left the pistols.”
The others agreed, and the pistols were left on the shelf by Bab, who remembered exactly where they had been when she found them. All the others, even Jimmie, peered curiously down into the underground room.