Consequently he had been able to draw something of a map of the interior of the mill, tell where the rusty and worthless machinery lay, and also just about where passing hoboes had always bunked, as the remains of many a cooking-fire proved.
Beckoning to Billy to draw near, Hugh asked him if anything out of the way had happened while he was gone. Nothing had apparently, according to the report of the Wolf scout. Once or twice they had seen a movement in the vicinity of the mill, as a hobo came out to take a suspicious look around, or perhaps gather up an armful of wood to keep the fire going until the time came to cook another scanty meal. But, as the three lads faithfully kept securely hidden, their presence in the vicinity had not been suspected so far as they could say.
The afternoon was pretty well gone. It began to look as though there was not the slightest chance for them to return to the island camp until another day had dawned, even if the shift might be made then. Billy understood this, and, as he was a great feeder, he became very solicitous to learn whether the boys had been thoughtful enough to provide against an enforced stay there by the mill. He also wanted to know if they had remembered that he and Monkey, and probably Gusty also, possessed something like an appetite; and whether the material to stop this squeamish feeling down below had been carried along.
He was made happy by having several of the boys assure him that they had stocked up with more than one ration, so that soon Billy figured he would have no end of a good time making way with the extra provisions.
“Nothing doing until it gets dark, seems like,” Billy told some of the others, for having been in consultation with the patrol leaders, he had managed to pick up information in regard to the decision reached in the council of war.
“And that strikes me as a mighty clever thing,” remarked Bud Morgan. “An attack like this is always apt to be successful when made under cover of the night.”
“Yes,” added Cooper Fennimore quickly, “in all the stories of border warfare I ever devoured, the Injuns always waited till a short time before dawn to rush the block-house. Seems like folks sleep heaviest just before day breaks, though any old time is good enough for me to get in seven winks.”
“But I don’t think Hugh means to wait till that late,” Billy told them. “From the smattering I managed to pick up, it seemed that they had figured on creeping up as soon as night set in, and starting things to working.”
Bud Morgan gripped his bat with vigor.
“Can’t come any too soon to suit me,” he muttered. As a rule Bud was not of a vindictive nature, but he could see that the Merrivale boy had not only been robbed but cruelly hammered by the fists of the two ugly hoboes and it riled the scout considerably.