"Oh, rats! there's that blessed old gun bobbing up again. Will I ever hear the last of that machine?" exclaimed Jerry, shrugging his shoulders.
"Not till the ghost is laid, I suppose, Jerry," remarked Frank.
Jerry walked along at his side, still grumbling as if he had a difficult matter to solve and could hardly make up his mind.
Thus they came to the spot where the late catastrophe had taken place.
The hole gaped at them in the trail.
"Say, this is a dangerous thing to leave uncovered. Some one else might fall in, perhaps one of that lumberman's kids if they happened to be playing hereabouts," remarked Frank, as they paused to look down once more into the dark depths.
"I wouldn't want my worst enemy to slip over that edge. My! but it was a queer sensation I had when falling. Let's cover the hole up again," remarked Jerry.
"If we can find the planks it would be a good idea," echoed Will.
They started a search immediately. When Andy and his followers had removed this cover, to substitute the frail one of slender sticks, quilted with dead leaves and a scattering of soil to deceive the eye, they could not have taken the boards far away.
"I'm dead sure they ain't in the hole," observed Jerry, as they hunted.
"Lucky for you they were not, as you might have broken a leg in striking hard planks instead of soft soil," remarked Frank.