“Oh! it may be only temporary. If Mr. Dodd comes and rounds up those hoboes as we expect, there’s nothing to prevent our pitching camp again right on the old spot, and enjoying another two days or so of this business,” came from Frank, who was under the falling canvas, working like a beaver.
Things were quickly accomplished. The more one camps the easier it is to stow things away in their proper places; and Frank was always particular about doing this, as a labor-saving device.
Hardly an hour after the coming of Bluff and the space was bare. All the “dunnage” had been snugly packed in two of the canoes, while Will was ready to enter the other and convoy the string out on the bosom of Lake Camalot.
They made him take Jerry’s gun as a means of protection. On his part, Will entrusted his precious camera to the tender mercies of Bluff, in hopes that the other might find some chance to snap off a few striking pictures while engaged in his search for Jerry.
“And it isn’t like your gun, remember, for it’s loaded,” he remarked.
“Well, my repeater is now. And perhaps when Jerry learns what a part it has had in his rescue he may stop sneering at it as a modern joke,” said Bluff.
After Will had started, and gone some little distance out on the lake, the two others left the deserted camping-ground.
“Where away first?” asked Bluff, willing to leave these matters to his friend, whose experience up in Maine was apt to prove valuable now.
“Let’s make along the beach for the place where those chaps were,” replied Frank.
“Oh! I see. You think we may find the trail of the wild man there?”