"I guess I will, Tom; and don't worry about me."
With that Felix was gone, his gun over his shoulder, and not a sign of his recent weariness to be seen about his quick, springy step, Tom noticed, with satisfaction.
The time passed rapidly to the boy who was so busy in camp. In fact, he hardly noticed its passage, and when he heard a distant shot, soon followed by a second, he was astonished to find that two hours had really gone.
"That sounded as though he'd struck something worth while," Tom was saying to himself, with a smile, once more turning his attention to whatever it was at which he chanced to be working at the time. "But unless he hurries in his work, it'll come on dark before he gets back. At this time of year night just seems to be in the tallest kind of a hurry to get a move on the daylight."
And indeed, as the dusk deepened, and he saw nothing of his chum, Tom went to the open door many times, wondering whether after all Felix might not have wandered so far afield that his own laughing prediction was being fulfilled, and that in truth he was temporarily lost.
But Tom, having prepared supper for two, waited a long time before he would sit down alone to eat his portion. As Felix was still absent the Western boy began to feel more or less worried. He had thought there could be little or no danger in those woods at the base of the Rockies; but now, with the absence of his chum, he began to see all sorts of evil things that might have come upon Felix, rather unused to these vast ranges of wilderness, so different from those he was accustomed to roaming in the Far East.
Later grew the hour, and Tom realized that the matter was getting a bit serious. He even went out, and fired his gun three times in rapid succession; and then listened eagerly; but there was no air stirring to carry sounds, and only the melancholy hooting of an owl up among the cliffs far away answered him.
[CHAPTER VII—UNAVOIDABLE DELAY]
There was a reason, and a good one, too, for Felix failing to show up that afternoon or evening, which will become apparent to the reader after a short time.
When he strode away from the camp under the big tree, it was as cheerfully as ever he had felt in all his life; nor was he dreaming of the possibilities of anything odd, or out of the usual rut, overtaking him. But many times it is the unexpected that swoops down upon us; just as storms once in a while surprise the oldest weather prophets, coming from a point they have never considered.