After Steve had been gone for some little time those who had been left in the camp under the forest trees prepared to spend the night as best the conditions allowed.
Fortunately there were enough of the blankets and covers to go around, so that each one would have some protection against the chill of the night. Max had been wise enough to look out for this when skirmishing around in that abandoned cabin belonging to Mrs. Jacobus.
"Will we have to keep any sort of watch, d'ye think, Max?" Bandy-legs asked, after the girls had crawled beneath the rustic shelter, and amid more or less laughter made themselves fairly comfortable.
Max smiled.
"Yes, but that doesn't necessarily mean any of us will have to stay awake," he went on to say, which remark caused the other to look puzzled until he saw Max nod his head over toward the spot where the ferocious bulldog calmly reposed, with his square head lying between his two forepaws.
"Oh! I see now what you mean," Bandy-legs announced; "and that's where your head was level, Max, though for that matter it always is. Sure he'll be the best sentinel agoing. But then there isn't one chance in a thousand we'll be bothered with visitors, unless of the hungry dog kind."
"That's so," agreed Max, "but you never can tell; and while the roads are all more or less flooded, and even the railroad blocked, tramps are apt to bob up in places where they've never been known before. We'll be keeping our fire going all night, you know, and that would be a signal to any one passing."
The four boys fixed themselves so that they really surrounded the shelter; constructed of boards and branches, in which the girls were snugly settled down. Max had told Mazie they meant to do this, for he felt that the fact would add more or less to the peace of mind of those whom they were protecting.
"Better get settled, you fellows," Max told the others, "and after that I'll attend to the fire so it'll keep burning a long time. Shack, what's that rag around your finger for? I hope now you didn't get bitten by one of the dogs when we had our row, because that might turn out to be a bad job."
"Oh! shucks, that ain't nawthin' much," Shack replied, with scorn; "I on'y knocked me fin against a tree when I was smackin' that setter a whack. He ducked too quick for me, yuh see, an' I lost him, worse luck; but second time I gives him a poke that made him howl like fits."