“Granted; but you heard what I told him—to wait for a reasonable time if he found the sheriff away. No doubt Mr. Dodd is out searching high and low for the very fellows we know to be here on Wildcat Island. Give Bluff more time. Take my word for it, he will show up when he gets good and ready, if not with the posse, then alone. Bluff doesn’t like to be left out in the cold when there’s anything of a rumpus going on. Want some help getting breakfast, Will?”
“Perhaps so, unless you are contented to eat cold boiled rice; we’ve got plenty and to spare of that dish,” answered the novice cook, with a grin.
“I rather think that would be a poor breakfast dish. The stomach wants something warm about this time. Are all the eggs that we brought gone?” asked Frank.
“I saw several in the coffee can just now. Somebody stuck them in there to keep from breaking them, I guess. How will you have yours?” answered Will.
“Leave it to me, and I’ll see that we have an appetizing mess. An omelet for mine, I think. But after all, I don’t seem so very hungry. Worrying about Jerry has somehow affected my spirits, and a fellow can’t eat much when he feels downcast.”
In spite of all drawbacks both boys did full justice to the breakfast that was spread on the table after a little while. Will kept tabs on whatever his companion did.
“I’m going to learn how to cook everything that one would be apt to want in a camp; and if you don’t mind explaining I’ll begin right now to take a few lessons,” he said as Frank started to break the eggs into a pannikin, preparatory to beating them up, and adding the shredded bits of ham they had left over from the previous day.
When the meal was finished and the dishes and cooking utensils properly washed up, Frank sat down to wait for Bluff to appear up the lake, while Will vanished inside the tent to bother with his films.
He had brought along an apparatus whereby he could develop these, no matter as to the time or conditions—daylight being just the same as darkness.
Frank heard him talking to himself inside the tent, but paid no attention to what he was saying, for at that moment he noticed a moving object up the lake, which he really believed might be the canoe of his chum, Bluff, returning alone.