Down went the log to the ground. All thought of using it as a battering ram had left them now.
“Git behind the trees, fellers. It’s us to the foolish house if we let that Waddy Walsh ketch us ag’in,” shouted Pet, who was rubbing his face quite as vigorously as his comrades in misery.
Upon this they hustled for shelter. Each boy took to a tree that happened to come handy, and feeling safe from a further bombardment they gave vent to their feelings in all sorts of characteristic shouts.
Frank was feeling a bit anxious about Jerry. What if these reckless spirits, aggravated by their hot reception, should try to take it out on the person of the boy they hated? Two of them carried some manner of shotguns, and there was no telling what they might not be tempted to do.
When, however, he looked anxiously up into the tree where he had last seen Jerry, to his delight he found that the other had vanished completely from sight.
“Where’s he gone?” asked Bluff, at this moment, he having apparently likewise just discovered the absence of the other chum.
“I don’t know. Perhaps he’s only hiding behind the trunk of the tree, or he may have found it hollow, like that other one, and slipped in. Watch what those fellows are up to. If they make a move to shoot at Jerry, we’ll have to put in our oar,” Frank answered with considerable feeling.
Pet Peters’ crowd was plainly at a loss to know how they ought to proceed. They saw that hundred dollars reward dangling temptingly before their eyes, and could not bear the thought of letting it pass without straining themselves to the utmost to win it. All sorts of things they had wanted so long could be bought with that easy money, and they were not yet ready to give up their chances.
“Hi! Bill, you an’ Sim git over here. I wanter have a spiel with yuh. Them guns orter fetch our game out on ther knees, if yuh on’y use ’em steady. Kim over, an’ you, too, Miser Lee. P’raps I kin use yuh!”
It was Pet bawling out, and that his word carried weight was manifest by the way in which the three fellows addressed hastened to cross over to where he stood back of the big tree that had the gaping hole in its trunk ten feet from the ground.