“I’m curious to see what it looks like, that’s all. After that, I think of making for the place where I lost Jerry. We’ve had no rain since, and it seems to me we ought to take up the trail at the place I lost it. I’ve since figured out how I came to go wrong that time, and if we have good luck, we ought to be able to follow it straight to the place they’re staying at.”
It took them but a short time to reach the late camp of Pet Peters and his cronies, which was full of signs of a hasty departure.
“I wonder what could have happened here?” mused Frank, as he looked around.
“Seems like they must have been having a high old time. There’s a remnant of a hat, and I declare if this isn’t piece of a coat sleeve. It was a fight, Frank, I tell you!” exclaimed Bluff, convincingly.
“Just as I suspected, but, of course, we may never know what caused it, and whether they were just indulging in a little racket among themselves or with the two hoboes. They had little left that would induce those rascals to attack them, seems to me,” remarked Frank.
“Listen! what was that?” suddenly asked Bluff.
Both boys stood motionless, with heads cocked on one side, straining their ears to catch a repetition of the sound that had come to them.
Quickly they heard it again.
“Say, it seems like a groan to me,” whispered Bluff, with eyes aglow.
“Just what I thought. There! that time I located it, Bluff. Come over here. Good gracious! what do you think of that?”