“Gee! I bet he heard!” said Carter.
“He did,” piped Rooke. “I saw him standing over there!”
“That’s all right,” Bob said. “He won’t say anything about it if we keep it quiet. Dan and I’ll go over there right off, and we’ll let you fellows know what can be done. There’s one thing certain: Wickasaw hasn’t any mortgage on that bluff over there.”
“You bet she hasn’t!” Dan concurred earnestly. “And just think how it must look from up the lake!”
“And from Camp Trescott!” exclaimed Carter. “Why, thunder! Trescott’s right under that bluff!”
“Gee!” groaned Carter. “Aren’t they having a fine laugh on us!”
“The laugh will be on some one else when we’re through,” said Dan determinedly. “Come on, Bob!”
The group broke up, and Dan and Bob sought and received permission to go to the village. Naturally, Tom and Nelson wanted to accompany them, but consented to remain behind when Bob explained that they must be careful not to awaken suspicion.
They lifted Bob’s crimson canoe from the rack under the trees, dropped it over the side of the float, and tumbled in. Then each took a paddle and made the craft fairly fly. At the landing by the bridge they pulled it out of the water and set off along the Pine Hill road through the tiny village and along the edge of a sloping meadow that skirts Humpback Mountain. Presently the cliff was in sight, rising sheer from the meadow to a height of some seventy feet. From the side it looked for all the world as though a giant had sliced a piece off the end of the mountain as one might cut the end from a loaf of bread, and had left the crumbs in the shape of big and little boulders piled up at the bottom. From the top of the cliff the ground sloped gradually for a ways and then sprang abruptly upward into the oddly shaped cone that lent the mountain its name. Their first view of the cliff gave them no sight of the face, and it was another minute’s walk before they could see the daubs of bright red paint that adorned it. There, staring down at them across the field, was the legend: