“It would be silly to think of going over and entering a complaint to that red-faced grunter,” declared X-Ray; “because we’d only be insulted to our faces. Why I wouldn’t put it past him to threaten to have us kicked out of his camp, though of course James would have too much sense to try the job himself.”
“We’ll have to pocket the insult, and try to guard against having it happen again, that’s all,” was Phil’s conclusion. “And let me tell you we have to be thankful it turned out no worse than it did. The damage isn’t worth mentioning, and it’s opened our eyes to the fact that we have dangerous neighbors who will bear watching from this time out.”
“But, Phil, we don’t mean to let them chase us away from here, do we?” interposed Lub, who came of good Revolutionary stock, and was a sticker.
“Well, I guess not, if we have to keep on the watch every single night,” retorted X-Ray, belligerently.
“Are we going to sit here till it’s time to get breakfast?” asked Lub, casting a solicitous glance over toward the spot where the boy was wrapped in his blanket—it would be hard to say whether Lub were concerned about the welfare of the little fellow, or coveted the warmth of the said blanket; perhaps he might have been influenced by both motives, for his heart was warm, even when he shivered with the cold breeze on his back.
“No use of that, when it’s hardly an hour after midnight right now!” declared Phil, with a look aloft to where the star-studded sky gave him the information. “The rest of you toddle back to the shack and let me sit here a while,” Ethan told them, as he gathered his blanket closer about him, after picking up his gun, as Phil noticed.
“I was just going to say the same thing myself, Ethan,” remarked the leader.
“But first come, first served, that’s the rule we go by, remember, Phil.”
“I’ll agree, on one condition,” he was told.
“Name it then, Phil.”