“Sure ting!” assented the Frenchman, and the look in his eyes was not good to see. He was the kind of man that would not stop at anything, and it is safe to say that O’Brien would not be far behind him in anything he might undertake.
The two worthies packed their blankets and, after drawing the money due them, set out from the camp. As they reached the edge of the clearing they both looked back, and Lavine shook his fist at the rough log houses.
“We’ll get square wiz ze whole bunch,” he said, with a furious oath, “old Scott and all of zem! Wait, dat’s all!”
“Right you are, Frenchy,” growled O’Brien. “Shake on that,” and with black thoughts in their hearts they entered the forest.
What plots they laid and how they failed to take Jack Danby into the reckoning will be seen a little later on.
CHAPTER V
THE BEAR’S SURPRISE PARTY
“And bang! bing! bang! went Billy’s gun, and that was the end of that bear.”
The words came clearly, distinctly to Dick Crawford swinging along through the cool, green, glorious forest; but as he looked wonderingly around, not a trace of the speaker could he see.
The words had been uttered in a clear, boyish voice, but if a boy had been there, he must have vanished into a hole in the ground, or been spirited away by the woodland brownies, for no sign of a boy could he see anywhere.
Dick stood perfectly still and listened with all his might, but not a human sound could he hear. Other sounds there were in plenty. The soft gurgling of the little brook that wound down the mountain side, and at its deepest part the quick splash of an otter, as, his small head glistening in the light, he swam rapidly across. There was the low murmuring of countless insects, the soft rustle of leaves as a frightened jack-rabbit scurried to his burrow. In the branches of a tree near by he could hear the twitter of a mother bird as she fed her nestlings, and directly over his head, in the spreading branches of a giant oak, two squirrels scolded noisily, very noisily, too noisily it all at once seemed to Dick, and, looking up keenly into the branches over him, he said quietly: