"Oh, I reckon it ain't so bad as that," remarked Trapper Jim. "Hard to drown a tall boy in a three-foot deep crick. Besides, he's up the wind from here, while the water lies the other way. That's one reason none of us heard him before."
They were all hurrying along by now. Bandy-legs, being a little timid, and not altogether liking the looks of the dark woods, had picked up the gun belonging to Max.
"My goodness!" he called out after the others, being in the rear of the little procession, "there's no telling how long poor old Toby might 'a' been letting out his whoops, and with that door shut we didn't hear him."
"Well, we can right now, all right!" called back Steve, who was running neck and neck with the trapper, swinging his lighted lantern in such a reckless, haphazard fashion that he was in momentary danger of smashing the useful article against some tree.
They could all hear Toby calling very clearly now.
"Help! Oh, h-h-help!"
"One thing sure," Max remarked; "Toby hasn't tumbled down into a hollow tree stump! His yells sound too plain for that."
"Oh, shucks; forget it!" said Bandy-legs.
Some time before, while the boys were hunting for Bandy-legs, who had become lost in a large swamp not twenty miles away from Carson, they had finally found him, caged fast inside a large hollow stump. He had climbed to the top of this to take an observation, when the rotten wood, giving way, had allowed him to fall inside.
It had been a bitter experience for Bandy-legs, and his chums never mentioned it without him shivering, as memory again carried him back to the hours of suffering he had spent in his woody prison.