“Come on, Tip. We’ll get him, all right!” he called out, when a hand was clapped on his shoulder and Hugh shouted in his ear:
“Don’t be foolish, Billy! If he chooses to take the chances that’s no reason you should follow suit. He may never come back again. Look, there is the floating tree coming down with a rush that we feared might strike the bridge and send it over!”
Billy stood in his tracks as though frozen. He realized in that instant how once more his impetuous nature had come close to getting him into a peck of trouble, as had happened on numerous past occasions.
Yes, there was a huge tree floating in the midst of a mass of wreckage, the whole making a terrible ram that, if brought suddenly against the already weakened bridge, must complete its downfall. And, apparently unaware of his danger, Tug Wilson was sauntering carelessly across the span, conscious only of the fact that hundreds of eyes must be centered on him just then.
Voices began to roar out at him. They were sending all sorts of warnings; but it might be that the boy took it for granted these were cheers because of the nerve he was exhibiting; for he never gave a single glance up-river way to where that monster floating tree and its attendant mass of wreckage was bearing down toward the tottering span of the bridge, with the force of a great battering ram.
CHAPTER IV.
AN HONOR TO THE WOLF PATROL.
“He’s crazy!”
“That’ll be the last of Tug Wilson!”
“Got just about one chance in three to skip back!”
These were some of the exclamations that broke from the boys whom energetic Hugh Hardin had gathered around him at the approach to the doomed bridge. Those fellows saw what a foolhardy thing it was the big bully of Lawrence had attempted.