“Boat—sure as you’re alive!” he declared.
“So it is—boat gone adrift!” Sam agreed, after a moment’s study of the object.
The Shark meditated an instant. “Look here, Sam!” he said. “Take the way the wind’s blowing—make note where that boat is—gives you one thing sure: Boat must have been beached just about here.”
“You mean to have drifted as that boat’s drifted?”
“Just what I mean. Know what my notion is? Well, it’s that somebody landed in this cove, left his boat, and went into the woods. When he came back a few minutes ago he found that the boat had worked off, and had been carried out into the lake by the wind. Then he saw or heard you and me coming, and bolted through the bushes. That shows that he didn’t want to be seen.”
Sam nodded. “That sounds reasonable. Only why should anybody be afraid of us?”
“Nobody would be—if he wasn’t up to something queer. When things are all right, and square, and aboveboard, everybody tries to pull with everybody else in fighting a forest fire. That fellow—whoever he was—ought to have joined us. Instead, he got away as fast as he could travel.”
Again Sam inclined his head in agreement. “Shark, you’re figuring this thing out right! I had my doubts if you really saw anybody; but the boat makes it a different case. And I’m going to find out who that skulker is. Come on!”
With that Sam plunged into the woods again, the Shark keeping with him. The mystery of the stranger for the moment took precedence over the task of watching the fire.
For a little the boys kept close to the shore, believing that the boat’s owner naturally would try to work back to the cove, and thence swim out to the drifting craft. The Shark had a theory that was just what the stranger had been about to do, when he was frightened off by their appearance; and Sam was disposed to accept it as a reasonable supposition.