“Then you mean to let ’em set the cabin on fire, and perhaps roast the poor hoboes before our very eyes?” exclaimed Bluff, in dismay.
“Not at all. I only mean that the job of frightening the bunch off is going to be taken out of our hands, for that wild man is coming back!”
“You don’t say? Where—point him out to me, Frank. Oh! if I could only get a chance to snap him off; but, just like the luck, the last flashlight cartridge is gone. Ginger! I see him now. Ain’t he a terror though? And won’t they go into fits when he rushes ’em? There he comes, as sure as you live! Wow! watch the circus, boys. My! my! ain’t I glad I’m here to see this!”
Tom Somers had said that his former teammates loved nothing better than a fight, but there were evidently times when such a condition of affairs was far from their thoughts. Such seemed to be the case now, for as they heard the shrill whoops of the outlandish hairy figure that came prancing headlong toward them, every boy took to his heels in a mad flight, heedless alike of direction or obstacles in the way, so long as he could escape a close encounter with that terrible creature.
CHAPTER XXII—HOLDING THE FORT
“Look at them run, Frank! Such a scared crowd of singed cats! Did you ever see such a sight? But where is that old wild man gone?” exclaimed Bluff, who had arisen fearlessly to his feet the better to watch the mad flight of Pet Peters and his cronies through the dense thickets.
“I couldn’t say, Bluff. I was too much taken up with the way some of those boys banged headlong into the trunks of trees to notice anything else. Did you see, Tom?”
“He climbed the same old tree, and popped into that hole like a jack-in-the-box,” declared the one addressed, quickly.
At that Frank laughed again and again, though Bluff looked at him as if hardly understanding what there was about the manner of the wild man’s disappearance to amuse his chum so.