All of them were thinking the same thing as they hurried to get their own fire going in front of the shack.
When this had been accomplished they found time to look around. The boy was sitting up, and Lub had seen to it that he had the warm folds of the blanket about him, so he was in no danger of taking cold. He looked both puzzled and full of wonder, but Phil noticed that he did not appear to be afraid.
“He’s made of good stuff, most likely,” he told himself; “and is a chip off the old block all right, if he’s Baylay’s boy; because they admit the poacher is a man without fear.”
“Now,” remarked Ethan, after they were all seated near the fire, “let’s try and get a little light on this mystery. How did that fire come to be started; and who put all that brush up against the back of our shack, I want to know?”
“That’s so, who did?” echoed Lub, wagging his head with the words, and looking unusually solemn.
“Notice in the first place,” Phil continued, “that it was piled up on the windward side; that was done so it would take hold in a hurry, once the match was struck. I even got a whiff of kerosene when I was working at putting out the blaze; and it strikes me some of it was used over the brush to make it burn more furiously.”
“Whee!” gasped Lub; “then you mean to say, Phil—”
“I mean that this thing didn’t come about by accident,” the other interrupted Lub to say positively; “none of us put that stuff there, and we have no kerosene to waste throwing it around. Besides, every one was sound asleep inside the shack when it happened.”
“Somebody meant to burn us out, that’s it, Phil!” declared X-Ray.
“Baylay?” cried Ethan, on a hazard.