Jack saw all these things as quickly as did his companion, even though he failed to cry out and express himself as vehemently as Josh took pains to do.
“Old dilapidated cabin as it is, note one thing, will you,” he remarked.
“You mean that the tracks lead up to the door, is that it, Jack?”
“Well, yes,” the other continued, “but just notice that there’s a rusty padlock on the door. Stop and think if that doesn’t look queer, considering that if anybody wanted to get in, all they’d have to do would be to knock that one hinge, and the whole door would drop flat?”
“Say, that makes me laugh, for a fact,” Josh chuckled. “But it’s just what you’d expect to run across up among these simple people of the border. They make me think of the ostrich. Don’t you know we read the silly thing just sticks its head in a little bush, and thinks because it can’t see anything that it’s got a bully hiding place.”
“Yes, that sort of covers the bill,” said Jack. “I guess this padlock is only meant to tell people who have no business here that they are not wanted inside this shack. It stands as a warning. To enter after that would be a breach of the rights to property, as Lawyer George would say.”
“Looky here, would you!” cried Josh, presently, while his companion was prowling around, and peeping through a hole in the wall, as though curious to know what the interior of the cabin looked like.
“What have you found now?” asked Jack, who was himself wondering why that new single trail had been made, coming out of the dense bushes at the back of the hut, and showing signs of recent passage, which somehow he could not help connecting with the flash of that lantern on the preceding night.
“The bally old lock don’t hold even a little bit,” announced Josh, as though that circumstance added to his hilarity. “See, I can lift it off with one finger. It’s a fake, that’s what it is, Jack. But while it might fool ordinary people, it can’t a live Yankee. Now what d’ye say to going in?”
Jack laughed as though amused at the reasoning of his chum, and remarked: