"Yes, let's have it, Max; we're ready to hear the worst," Owen went on.
"It sounded more like a human voice than anything else I can think of!" was what Max immediately said, very calmly indeed.
"Just what I thought you'd give us!" cried Steve, making a move as though ready to spring away into the surrounding darkness, gun in hand.
"Hold on," added Max, taking a firm hold on the coat of the impulsive chum; "we'd like to know why you try to run off, when I remarked that I thought it mightn't be an animal at all, but a human being?"
"Why?" repeated the other, struggling a little as if wanting to break away, but finally giving up the effort, "because I just know who it is, that's what, and I'd give a heap to lay my hands on him, that's all."
"B-b-but, Steve, mebbe the r-r-rest of us'd l-l-like to know, too," stammered Toby, eagerly.
"Yes, and sure you wouldn't be rushing off like a house afire, to leave us here without the gun, while you lost yourself in all this tangled undergrowth," Owen suggested, reproachfully.
Steve looked a little conscience stricken.
"That's right, it would be mean of me, fellows," he admitted, as he glanced at the gun he had snatched up so eagerly. "And likewise silly in the bargain, because in this pitch darkness I'd like as not only stub my toe, and take a beastly header into some snake hole. I guess I'll simmer down, and stay where I'm most needed."
"But, Steve," complained Bandy-legs, "you ain't told us yet who you believe it was made all that noise? And do you think he did it just to give us a scare?"