“Get some more wood, then!” ordered Lub, “and be careful about that bean-pot. I hung it across on that iron rod from two stakes with crotches on top, but it is a little shaky. If you spill the beans your name will be Dennis, I warn you.”
“He’d better cut a hole in the ice and drown himself if he’s that clumsy,” warned X-Ray; “for after smelling those beans cooking all this time it would make me pretty cross if I was cheated out of having three messes for supper.”
Somehow even tender-hearted Lub had not been heard to express anything like sorrow on account of what had happened over at the other camp. In fact all of them seemed to be of the one mind; and to think that it served the bossy millionaire about right to be ordered around a little, and made to dance a hornpipe at the dictation of the terror of the pine woods.
According to their notion it was a dose of his own medicine Mr. James Bodman had been compelled to take. No doubt many a time he had by his brutal methods of frenzied finance compelled others to dance to his fiddling; and now he knew how it felt himself.
Indeed, X-Ray was filled with only one keen regret. He would have given almost anything for the pleasure of being in position to see what the French chef had so aptly described.
“Just to think of that red-faced fat old fellow dancing as the bullets plowed up the snow close to his toes!” he was heard to say; “I can see him jumping up and down like mad, cracking his heels together, puffing like a winded nag, and screaming his threats at the man who was treating him as if he were only a common every-day ten dollar a week clerk, instead of the great American millionaire. Wow! it must have been rich, though!”
They could talk of nothing else all evening. No matter what subject was broached some one was sure to bring it back to the one intensely interesting topic.
It seemed to be the consensus of opinion among them that Phil was right when he figured that Baylay could not have been home before he visited the other camp. If he had known of his child’s vanishing in the great snow forest he would hardly have bothered himself seeking revenge for the injury to his dog. On the contrary it was more than likely he would have besought the inmates of the camp to come to his assistance in trying to find the child, even though all hope of the little one being still alive must be abandoned.
“I wonder if we will see him here, sooner or later?” Lub ventured to say, and then giving his little charge a benevolent look he continued: “If he could only up and tell us things it’d make it so much easier. Sometimes seems to me the boy knows what I’m saying to him, and tries the best he can to answer, but as yet I haven’t mastered his sign language. Chances are his mammy would know everything he wants to tell.”
“He’s gone to sleep now,” remarked Phil, “after that fine supper he put away. One thing sure, he hasn’t lost his appetite even if he has his folks.”