"The storm came up before you could start, I suppose?" questioned Will.
"Yes, and Bluff here wanted to pull out anyhow," Jerry replied, "but I kicked on that, and some of the villagers also warned him it would be suicidal—yes, that's the exact word they used, Bluff, and you know it. What if I'd given in to you, and we had been caught all of a sudden by that hurricane? Well, I'll bet deep down in your heart you're just as glad as anything I kept you from making that silly start."
"Sure I am, Jerry! and I hope you didn't really think I meant to go. I was only trying to keep up to my reputation and name as a bluffer. All the while I knew as well as anything we never could get a quarter of the way here. I've cut my eye-teeth for all I sometimes make out to be so brash and bold."
Frank and Will only laughed at the expression of disgust they saw creeping over Jerry's face. Surely all of them ought to know Bluff well enough by this time to understand that he did not always mean what he said.
"And now," remarked Frank, "see if either of you can figure out this mystery." With that he told them how he and Will had found signs of some one's having been in the old cabin on the point between the time they had left it and their late return on that morning.
CHAPTER XV
DAYS OF REAL SPORT
"You're dead sure nothing was taken, are you, Frank?" Bluff demanded first of all, his suspicions running in the direction of a sneak thief.