“While you two boys were away on your hunt this afternoon, something happened which deepened my suspicion that we have a traitor among us. By a mere accident I picked up a bit of paper that some one must have drawn from his pocket unknown to himself. Glancing idly at it I was startled at what I read.”
He looked around him as though to make certain that no eye watched his action, and then placed a small piece of paper, very much wrinkled and soiled, in Dick’s hand. Together the boys fastened their eyes on the writing and made out the fragment of a sentence:
“if you think it unsafe to stay longer in the camp, join us; but be sure and bring plenty of guns and ammunition along, for we need them.”
There was no signature, but the boys did not doubt in the least that the one whose hand had Penned this note of instructions was François Lascelles or his equally rascally son, Alexis. The question was, who could the recipient be, and how were they to find out.
“After you found this paper, Captain, you watched to see if any one seemed to be searching for anything, I suppose?” Dick asked eagerly.
“All the afternoon I have kept on the alert, but, whoever the villain is, he has either not discovered his loss, or else has assumed an appearance of indifference in order to blind hostile eyes.”
“But how do you suppose he could have received the message?” continued Dick.
“That, too, may always remain a mystery,” continued the other, reflectively, “but an arrangement could have been made whereby certain stones that were laid down in a peculiar manner would direct him to search in a hollow stump or under a log for a letter. All we know is that this traitor did receive his message, and started to tear it to pieces, but on second thought kept part of the letter.”
“It will be his undoing yet, sir, I think,” Roger ventured to suggest. “Too bad there was no name mentioned, so we could charge him with the deed, and punish him as he deserves. I am wild to know who he is, for I shall long remember how he tried to put an end to us in the rapids of the Yellowstone.”
“Perhaps you may, and that before another dawn comes,” remarked the captain, as he smiled indulgently at the headstrong boy, whom he had come to like very much, as, indeed, he did Dick, also.