Retiring to his room that night, Dick sat down in a chair near the open window and stooped to unlace his moccasins. The loft was smothering. Sunshine still streamed into the room. All day a furnace glare had lain over the river valley. Outside the grass was dry and the leaves of the white poplar curled from the intense heat. One of the longest days in the year, it would be three hours yet before the crimson ball of the sun, rolling through the northwestern sky, would sink to the line of the horizon. Ten feet away, sitting on the edge of his bunk, Sandy puffed and wiped his perspiring brow.
“Whew! Let’s postpone going to sleep for a while and slip down to the river and have a dip. It will be the third time we’ve been in today, but we have to try to keep cool somehow. Cracky! But isn’t this loft hot.”
In the act of pulling off one moccasin, Dick paused, considering Sandy’s suggestion. He rose from the chair and stood looking out of the window.
“I’ll bet that’s where Toma is now,” he guessed.
Just then he saw a movement in the brush, caught the bright gleam of sun upon steel, and stepped back just as the screen on the window shivered from the lightning stroke of a bullet. Something that felt like a breath of hot wind scorched his side. Two holes appeared as if by magic in his bulging flannel shirt. A vicious thud behind him and another hole showed in a pine log on the opposite wall.
“Cracky!” exclaimed Sandy again. “Dick are you hurt?”
“Almost got me that time.” Trembling, Dick walked over and exhibited the tell-tale holes.
“Didn’t it even nick you?” gurgled Sandy.
“Not a bit. That was lucky. I caught a glimpse of the man that fired the shot.”
“Who was it?”