Dare one of them crawl around the corner of the cabin and try to look in at that entrance? The risk seemed almost too much. Still, Frank remembered that they had two guns among them, while, so far as they knew, the hoboes possessed none; at least they had shown nothing of the sort thus far.
He had been thinking this over, however, and concluded that it hardly stood to reason that such desperate characters as these two, one an escaped reform school inmate and the other a yeggman tramp, would be entirely without some means of defence. Perhaps one of them might have a revolver which he had up to now kept out of sight for some reason.
Tom was pulling at Frank’s trousers entreatingly. Catching his attention, he made a gesture with his hand, as talking was now out of the question.
Following the line of his pointing finger, Frank saw what had attracted the eye of the boy who had been West. Some animal had for a time used the hut as a lodging-place, and as the door at the time may have been closed, had dug a tunnel under the wall at the back of the place.
Possibly the men inside had filled the hole up beyond the wall, but they had paid no attention to that which lay beyond.
Frank caught the idea instantly. It was to begin to tunnel under the wall, drawing away the earth piecemeal until an opening was made, when one of them might crawl through and make discoveries.
The idea appealed to him somehow or other, and, handing his gun silently to Tom, he set to work lifting handfuls of loose dirt, and gradually scooping out quite a hole. It was easy work because the place had only recently been filled in. As he worked he wondered what sort of an animal had made the tunnel under the wall; perhaps a wildcat, or it might have been a ’coon, hardly a bear, though such big game could be occasionally met with around Lake Camalot, especially along the headquarters of Lumber Run up at the other end of the body of water.
The minutes passed in this way. Several times Frank caught some sound beyond the wall, but could not make out what it might mean. He felt positive, however, that it was the home of the hoboes he had reached, and not a hiding-place of that strange creature so like a gigantic ape, but which wore shoes like a man.
Now he felt the earth growing lighter, as though he might be coming close to an end of his strange task. He was still digging away, eager to learn whether his plan could be carried out, when without the slightest warning something that moved came in contact with his flesh, and he felt his fingers seized by a human hand!