“We’ll be there, too, won’t we, Horace?” asked Judy. “We’ll find out what this is all about or die trying.”
“We may die all right,” agreed her brother. “It was never as safe as we thought it was with the Earl and his boys hanging around. He’s armed and dangerous.”
“So is Peter,” Judy said, glad for once of the gun she had often wished he didn’t have to carry. He wouldn’t use it, she knew, unless the criminals made it necessary. Was that one of them now, in the woods just ahead?
Danny stopped short. He had seen a boy running toward them at the same time Judy called Horace’s attention to him with a quick, terrified gesture. All three of them stood frozen. The boy was wearing a striped T-shirt, and in his hand was something that looked amazingly like the missing leg from the lady table.
“It is!” Judy whispered, seeing the quiet face turn toward her almost as if it were alive. “What’s he going to do?”
She hadn’t long to wonder. They had reached the beaver dam. There were the familiar ripples that told Judy the beavers were on the way to their dome-shaped lodge of brush and sticks. The entrance, for safety’s sake, was under water.
“Watch!” Horace whispered, his hand in front of Judy to hold her back.
The boy stood near the beaver lodge for a moment as if undecided. Then he raised the table leg and hurled it into the pond.
