“I reckon we’ll manage to get a picture of his Highness, King Mink,” Elmer assured him; “when we’ve laid ourselves out to the limit. I know a few tricks along those lines, which are quite at your service, Amos. But see here, what a queer find I made in the old cabin.”
He held up the quaint pocket-knife as he said this, and the eyes of the other became instantly focussed on it. To the astonishment, almost consternation, of Elmer, he seemed to be immediately strongly affected by the sight of the late property of the roving tramp.
Perk and Wee Willie also stared to notice how the face of Amos, actually showing a dash of color when he first joined them, now suddenly became as pale as that of a ghost. His breath came and went in gasps, though apparently he was making desperate efforts to hold himself within bounds, doubtless realizing how his startled companions must be observing him.
“Where did you say you found it, Elmer?” he finally managed to say, in what might be termed half gasps, while he could be seen swallowing something that seemed to rise in his throat, and threaten to choke him, poor fellow.
“Why, in the cabin there,” explained the other, hesitatingly. “It was sticking in one of the logs forming the wall, between the little opening used as a window and the big fireplace. I think the hobo must have used it to cut up some hard plug tobacco, for it smells rank of the stuff; and then carelessly thrust the point into the log, before our coming frightened him away.”
“And, what do you think,” Perk now managed to add, “Elmer believes it was to recover this old knife that the old tramp came back and walked around the cabin twice last night, looking for a chance to get inside. Too bad, isn’t it, Amos?”
Amos, however, seemed to pay scant attention to what Perk was saying. His distended eyes were fastened on the article which still lay exposed in Elmer’s open palm.
“But—couldn’t it have been there a long time, don’t you think?” he now asked, as though clinging to a straw; “say as much as—six or seven years?”
“I’m dead sure it hasn’t,” he was told positively. “In the first place, other persons besides us have visited the old cabin here from time to time, and some one would surely have found it. Then again, look how smooth the steel of the discolored blade is; it must have rusted if it had been exposed to the weather for even a few months. Oh! no, Amos, whoever the tramp is, he surely put it where I found it, and this very night.”
“I—guess you’re right, Elmer,” fell in trembling tones from the lips of the other, still looking peaked and white. “W—would you mind my looking at it?”