A sense of coming trouble immediately weighed on the minds of Bluff and Jerry, as they awaited the coming of the men.
CHAPTER XX—ROBBED OF THE SPOILS
“Had we better move along out of here?” asked Jerry, as he looked doubtfully toward the quarter whence the three sportsmen were hastily advancing.
“What for?” demanded Bluff truculently.
“You know what Bill Nackerson threatened to do if ever the chance came his way,” Jerry replied. “We’re outnumbered three to two.”
His words implied that had there been an even showing he might not have thought of leaving.
Bluff knew that their best policy under the circumstances would be to walk away and avoid any trouble with the men. He also remembered promising Frank not to take any unnecessary chances, no matter what came up.
At the same time, Bluff was a poor loser. By that it must not be understood that when fairly beaten he would try to find fault and call his defeat an accident, for Bluff was always the first to congratulate a victor, even though he might be one of the victims. But he hated to give anything up.
So he looked first at the three men, who were now drawing very near; then he allowed his gaze to rest upon the form of the dead moose. It was, as Bluff himself afterward expressed it, “like drawing his eyeteeth to let that bully moose slip out of his possession.”
“Don’t let’s hurry too much,” he told Jerry, as a sort of compromise decision. “Perhaps, after all, they’ll just give us a hauling over the coals, and move on, leaving the game to us.”