“Oh! I don’t suppose the millionaire believed it would be as bad as that, for I hardly think he’s got to the point where he’d commit murder outright; but he meant to give us all the bother he could. That was his way of trying to get even because we refused to knuckle down to him, and let him claim our caribou.”
“Huh! guess then he’s been crazy to shoot game like that for a long time; and was a whole heap disappointed when he found it was our shots that had downed the young buck,” and X-Ray chuckled as though he felt that after all the score was still decidedly in their favor.
“What surprises me, and makes me feel small,” continued Phil, “is how I could sleep through it all and never know that they were creeping up, fetching that brush along with them, and piling it against the back of the shack.”
“Oh! we’re all in the same boat,” said Ethan, “because I was hundreds of miles away from here, and going to singing school with Sally Andrews when X-Ray let out that yawp!”
“And I own up that it was just by a lucky chance I happened to wake up,” X-Ray Tyson admitted; “you know smoke always makes me choke, and that’s why I try to sit on the windward side of fires. It must have got in my throat as I slept, because I suddenly sat upright to get my breath. Course I knew right away something was on the boards that ought to be attended to, and so I woke the rest up gently.”
“Gently!” echoed Lub; “say, it seemed to me as if an electric current heavy enough to execute a criminal had been shot through my system. I bet you I’ve lost as much as five pounds in weight just through the nervous excitement.”
“Poor chap!” said X-Ray; “it’s a pity then it doesn’t happen oftener. I think I’ll take to giving you a regular shock like that every few nights. You could drop forty pounds and be all the better for it.”
“Who’s running my heft, me or you, I want to know?” demanded Lub; “it suits me just as it is. When I get a notion that I want to start to join your Living Skeleton class I’ll give you due notice. And until that time comes please let me sleep in peace.”
“Well, what can we do about this outrage?” asked Ethan.
“Nothing much,” admitted Phil.