“Ugh! Huh?” demanded Dig. “You ought to thank me for that, then.”
“You’d make a nice soldier!”
“Never claimed to be a soldier, and didn’t expect to go soldiering when I came out on the trail with you,” declared Dig belligerently. “I guess you’ll find everything all right. And you slept just as hard as I did.”
“Sha’n’t trust you to keep watch again,” said Chet.
“Well, that’s a good thing! By the last hoptoad that was chased out of Ireland! I don’t want to keep watch.”
But Chet was serious. He saw that the horses and the calf were safe. But when he went into the thicket, he saw that the dead wolf had been dragged away to a distance and there torn to bits. Only red bones and bits of fur remained.
Then he remembered the haunches of venison left hanging to cool. He ran to the spot. Only a single ham hung in the top of a sapling. The others had been torn down. The tops of the saplings were broken, supposedly by the wolves as they leaped for the meat.
At Chet’s first cry Dig came running.
“Now you can see what was done while you slept,” said young Havens, with disgust.
“Whew! The miserable, thieving beasts!” burst out Dig. “Wish I’d caught ’em at it—”