The cover was adapted from the original by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain. Spellings have been standardised only when a dominant version was found in the original. Typographical errors have been corrected.

CRACK! HIS RIFLE SPOKE JUST AS THE GREAT MOOSE LIFTED HIS FOREFEET HIGH IN THE AIR TO STRIKE

Frontispiece ([Page 213])

Frank Allen at Old Moose Lake

FRANK ALLEN AT
OLD MOOSE LAKE

OR

The Trail in the Snow

BY

GRAHAM B. FORBES

Author of “Frank Allen—Pitcher,”
“Frank Allen and His Motor Boat,” etc.

NEW YORK

GARDEN CITY

GARDEN CITY PUBLISHING CO., INC.

1926

THE FAMOUS
FRANK ALLEN SERIES

BY
GRAHAM B. FORBES

See back of book for list of titles

COPYRIGHT, 1926, BY
GARDEN CITY PUBLISHING COMPANY, INC.

Frank Allen at Old Moose Lake
MADE IN THE U. S. A.

FRANK ALLEN AT OLD MOOSE LAKE

CHAPTER I
PREPARING FOR THE CAMP

“And I’ll be happy!” came the loudly sung final line of a popular song, the words of which had been changed to inform the hearer that a camping party was most in the mind of the singer.

Lanky Wallace, the slim, athletic, quick-thinking pal of Frank Allen, was sauntering along the street towards Frank’s home, a rifle carried jauntily on his right shoulder, the singing being done by that young man for the sole purpose of attracting the attention of his friend.

Frank’s head popped out of an upper front window of the house.

“Don’t! Don’t! You’ll get arrested for disturbing the peace!” he cried, as Lanky looked up at him.

“What’s that? Get arrested for singing?” and Lanky struck a hurt attitude.

“Oh, that’s different! I didn’t know that was what you were doing. I thought you were calling hogs or selling peanuts!” called Frank, while Lanky swung the gun quickly from his shoulder as if he might bring it up to kill such an insulting speaker.

“Be down in a minute!” called Frank again, as he slammed the window to the bottom and disappeared into his room.

In a few minutes the two boys were together on the street, each with his rifle, headed for the homes of other boys.

Paul Bird, Ralph West and Buster Billings were sought and found, and when each had his rifle on his shoulder, the five young fellows started back toward the main road north.

“We ought to have some good target practice this morning,” said Frank, while the boys, all bunched together, made along the road. “Camping up at Old Moose Lake is going to call for some regular shooting, and too much practice isn’t enough.”

“Guess we’re the lucky boys,” remarked Lanky, after they had gotten to the edge of town and were approaching the woods in the rolling land beyond Columbia.

One of the boys asked him the “why” for the remark.

“Well, if Frank hadn’t been out West just when he was and if he hadn’t been where he was when we found dad’s treasure in the hills, and if dad hadn’t given Frank the Rocket, the best little old motor boat ever born, and if we hadn’t been coming down the Harrapin River just at the time we heard the cries of Mrs. Parsons and——”

“Say, listen!” Paul Bird interrupted the long-drawn out sentence of Lanky Wallace. “Are you making a speech or something?”

“—and,” continued Lanky, paying no heed to the interruption, “if we hadn’t seen that auto leave there, if we hadn’t luckily stumbled on to the rowboat taking the stolen stuff to Jed Marmette’s, if we hadn’t followed up the lead and seen old Jed stealing some of the stuff and if we hadn’t broken down that night, run out of gas, when we raced to Coville, all might have been different about this camping party.”

Lanky was quite right in this. The boys had planned a camping party at this autumn season, and Mrs. Parsons, the wealthy widow just above the city of Columbia who had been robbed of her jewels and silver, was so grateful to Frank and his friends for what they had done that she had offered them the use of the late Mr. Parsons’ camp at Old Moose Lake for their camping expedition when she learned they had made plans for one.

In the preceding volume, called “Frank Aden and His Motor Boat,” is told the story of the manner in which Frank and his boy friends had come into the activities of the robbery in time to catch the thieves redhanded and also to find for Mrs. Parsons her jewels and the silverware, most of which had come to her from her ancestors and those of her husband, who had died only two years before.

It so happened that Mrs. Parsons had accepted some questionable rumors for fact and had accused the boys of knowing more than they did. Her chagrin after the disclosure and her gratitude over the good work done by Frank Allen, Lanky Wallace, Paul Bird and Ralph West, caused her to reward them first with a very, very delightful picnic at her country home, a palatial spot facing the Harrapin River. It was following this picnic that, hearing the boys had been planning a camping expedition for the autumn season, she graciously tendered to Frank and his friends the use of a beautiful camp which had been the pride of Mr. Parsons in his lifetime, an offer the boys had cheerfully accepted.

“It was mighty good of Mrs. Parsons to offer us the camp up at Old Moose Lake,” said Frank, in reply to Lanky’s humorous recital. “She says it is stocked with food and she said she was going to order some more sent there, so we’ll have plenty of chance to keep alive, if eating is the only thing we have to do to keep alive.”

“No,” said Lanky, very sagely shaking his head in the negative, “we can’t keep alive unless we bring down fourteen deer, a couple of hundred pickerel, and——”

“And kill yourself getting it all home,” laughed Paul Bird.

By this time the chums had come to the grove where they proposed to hold their target practice, and Frank, with his usual sense of safety, led the way from the road almost a quarter of a mile, coming at last to a ravine which broadened out at one point to a great bowl, its sides of rock and sand.

“We can set up the target over that bed of sand,” and Frank pointed to one stratum of fine sand which broke out in the side of the ravine. “That will allow the bullets to imbed in something soft and we won’t take any chances on their glancing off.”

“That’s provided any one hits the target—except me, of course, I know my shots will all hit it all right——”

Once again Lanky Wallace was telling the other boys what he was going to do, joking with them.

“Listen to Mr. Lanky Wallace, who hates himself!” cried Ralph West. “How close do you expect to stand to hit that sand bed?”

“Come on, fellows,” broke in Frank. “Get that old piece of board and lean it against the sand bed, then pin the targets on. I’m anxious to shoot with my rifle——”

“That’s more than Lanky’s shooting with!” laughed Buster Billings. At this Lanky reached for Buster, but not quickly enough. That live lad was expecting the necessity for moving out of the way, and was successful.

The boys soon had the target placed properly, and then tossed up for the firing order, with Frank getting third shot, Paul and Lanky coming first and second, respectively.

Crack! Paul’s first shot broke the stillness, for the other boys paid the courtesy of keeping quiet while the contestant was sighting.

“Hit the atmosphere!” cried Lanky. “Watch me move that sand bed for you!” he added as he stepped up to the line to take Paul’s place.

Crack! Lanky’s rifle rang out—and there was a hole in the bullseye to show where he had struck.

“Just requires a man who knows how to handle it,” he calmly said as he raised his rifle for the next shot.

Crack!

“Wow! Where did that one go? Trying to hit the top of that hemlock?” yelled Ralph West, for there was not a mark on the board to show where Lanky’s second shot had gone.

“Just take a look in the bullseye and you’ll find both of them. I just pile them one on top of another!” Lanky calmly let his rifle drop to the ground.

Ralph and Buster raced to the target and looked carefully. It was Ralph who spoke:

“Both in the same spot!”

Frank Allen did not attempt to restrain his smile, for he knew that Lanky was a good shot, one of the best in Columbia, and he was amused by the bombastic attitude that Lanky had taken, realizing that Lanky, unassuming ordinarily, was just putting this on to-day for the fun of it. Frank knew that Lanky himself had not been certain whether or not he had put his second shot on top of the first.

Lanky took his third shot, permitted him by their unwritten rules that when a boy hit the bullseye he was entitled to another shot at once.

This time Frank watched the level of Lanky’s rifle, and smiled broadly again as he realized that Lanky was deliberately shooting over the top of the ravine. When his shot rang out there was no additional mark on the target.

“Just look in the bullseye where the others went,” he calmly said, and the same two boys, Paul and Buster, hurried to the target to see if this could possibly be true.

Lanky turned to Frank, saw the broad smile on Frank’s face, and whispered to him:

“Shot over the top of the ravine. Bet they’ll say I hit in the center again.”

Just then Paul, spokesman for the two, called out:

“Right in the center again! That’s some shooting, Lanky! Three of them right in the middle!”

Frank did not restrain himself any longer.

“You fellows certainly are easy. Don’t you know that Lanky deliberately shot away over the top of the target, just to see if you could find his mark in the center?”

“Hay!” yelled Lanky Wallace. “Wait a minute. Who are the judges? I appeal to the judges. They said I hit in the middle again. How about it, Paul?”

If any one else had said anything about it, perhaps Paul Bird would have stood by his guns and may have reiterated his decision. But Paul knew that Frank’s eye was good, and he knew that Frank Allen had caught on to some kind of joke.

Frank stepped to the line and pushed Lanky aside. And Lanky gave way for his friend, laughing heartily at the way in which he had put over a practical joke on the boys.

Frank Allen’s rifle was a repeater, and when he took his stand in front of the target he determined he would fire three times very quickly to see what were the results.

Crack! Crack! Crack!

As he sighted and made his first shot he drew back the ejector and made the second, following which he as quickly made the third.

“Wow!” yelled two of the boys whose sight was best. “Made the ring of the bullseye on all three of them and didn’t pile them up, either!”

Even from the distance at which they stood, all of the boys could see that Frank had put three straight shots, made as closely together as was possible, at the edge of the bullseye, each one scoring.

“That was great——”

“Help—Help!”

A girl’s voice just over the top of the ravine to their right reached the boys. It was a sincere cry for help.

All bantering stopped. The boys turned their eyes toward the spot from which the cries had come.

“Help! Help!”

Two different voices sounded this time.

“Helen and Minnie!” cried Frank, as he took a firmer grip on his rifle and leaped for the opening up the right side of the ravine, from which direction the cries, mingled now with another voice, had come.

“And in trouble!” came from Lanky. “Come on, fellows, make it snappy! They may need us the worst way!”

CHAPTER II
FRANK IS THREATENED

As the boys scrambled out of the ravine they again heard the screams of the girls, one of them a decidedly louder scream than was made by the others.

Over a small ridge the five lithe, active young fellows went, and, in full view there now unfolded to them the panorama of a frightful scene!

On a ledge forming a step in a steep incline of a hill stood Minnie Cuthbert, Frank’s best girl friend. She was frantically trying to grasp the limb extending downward from a tree in an effort to swing out on it. Further along the ledge stood two other girls, one of them Helen Allen, Frank’s sister, the other Dora Baxter.

Rushing toward Minnie, and now only a few yards from where she stood on the lower part of the ledge, its mouth issuing foam and its head covered with it, flecks of foam flying over its back, came a beautiful dog—evidently mad!

There could be no question as to the intent of the animal.

Crack! A rifle shot rang through the woods.

Without more than a passing aim, relying on that sense of direction which had brought Frank several target practice triumphs, he had raised his repeating rifle to his shoulder and brought the dog to the ground in the midst of a leap which would have carried it to the feet of the screaming, struggling girl.

As the dog, shot full in its final leap, struck at her feet, Minnie made a final jump high in the air, and landed back of the rolling animal which passed the spot where she had been standing, rolled over several times on the ledge, ending against the perpendicular wall of the hillside.

“Minnie! Minnie! Wait a minute!” Frank yelled to the frantic girl as, not being in the grip of the dog, she rushed headlong down the incline to the glen below.

Minnie stopped, turned, and saw the dog lying on the ledge above her, saw the other girls walking, though excitedly, toward her.

By this time Frank had dashed across the intervening space and had reached her side.

“You’re safe now! Where did that dog come from?” he asked her. “What were you doing here?”

But Minnie’s tongue was not ready to function just yet. She was breathing hard. Her breast was heaving sharply, her face was of a grayish pallor, her wide eyes glassy, her lips trembling, her body aquiver.

Frank took her hand and held it for a moment, thinking she might faint, but as the other boys approached and the girls, too, the color came back to her cheeks, her eyes became normal, and she was able to stammer:

“We were nutting, and all of a sudden this dog came rushing toward us. It ran around in a big ring, and I saw the foam flying. I realized that it was mad!”

“It was mad!” exclaimed Helen Allen. “It ran around in a big ring and we thought it was going to go back to the road, but we started running away from it, anyhow. Then it ran again at us, and we screamed and ran back.”

Frank turned the dog over, after a quick glance had told him it was breathing no more, and all of them saw the red spot where the bullet had reached its mark—squarely in the side of the head.

“This hunting dog was dead when it struck at Minnie’s feet,” observed Ralph West.

“I’ll claim to the world that’s some shooting,” said Lanky. “Good thing you had some target practice—especially following my good lessons.” And there was a merry smile on the lean fellow’s face as he permitted a laughing remark to fit into the situation.

The boys and girls marveled at the shot that Frank Allen had made at a time when only a good shot would answer the requirements.

“I wonder who it belongs to,” murmured Frank, taking a very careful look at the dog again. “I don’t remember seeing one like him around here lately.”

None of the party remembered a dog of its kind.

“Did it come from the road?” asked Frank, turning to Helen.

The girls replied in chorus that it did.

“It has every resemblance of a mad dog,” said Frank, “but I thought dogs went mad in the middle of the summer. This is nutting time, autumn, and no time for a dog to go mad.”

“Frank,” spoke up Lanky slowly, deliberately, “do you know something—this is a good dog—it belongs to some one who values it—and I believe we ought to have a veterinarian come out here and see it.”

The idea struck Frank at once as being an important one, whereupon, after a moment’s thought, he said:

“I believe you’re right, Lanky. We’ll get Doc Whittaker to look at it and hear what he has to say. And we’ll have his support in case our guess is right. We have killed this dog—that is, I have—and I’ll have to pay for it, and pay well, too, unless I’m able to prove that it was mad.”

“But it was rushing at me to bite me!” cried Minnie. “You could tell the man who owns it just that. That’s certainly good enough reason!”

“He—ah, Bill! He—ah, Bill!” came a voice followed by several shrill whistles. Some one from the road was calling a dog.

“The owner—now!” said Paul Bird excitedly.

The entire crowd was quiet for several seconds, until the same call and the same whistled signal came again, this time much closer.

“Here you are, mister! Come down this way!” Frank made a trumpet of his hands and called back to the man.

A moment later a burly man, dressed in a heavy brown suit, a rather lengthy, drooping mustache partially covering an ugly looking mouth, broke through a small bunch of brush and came out at the top of the hillock next to them.

“I think that is your dog over here,” said Frank, speaking directly to the man.

“He—ah, Bill! Come here!” called the man, but no dog answered.

“It can’t come, mister, it’s dead.”

Frank spoke to the man very plainly, and in a tone of voice that was quiet, each word enunciated distinctly.

“Dead!” Whereupon the man rushed down the little dale or glen that separated them, and came up to the hillock where the boys and girls were huddled together. Two other men came over the farther hillock behind him, attracted by the conversation.

The large man gave one look at the dog lying on the ledge, a bloody spot showing very conclusively what had happened, each of the boys carrying rifles as further mute evidence.

“Who killed that dog? Who killed it?” he demanded threateningly, drawing himself to his full height and glaring at the boys menacingly.

For a tense moment all were silent.

“I killed the dog,” said Frank, then.

“What’s that? You killed my dog?” and the man made as if to leap on Frank to throttle him.

“Hold off, there,” Frank’s voice was piercing in its deadly quiet. “Don’t come too close to me. Listen to what I’ve got to say.”

“Well, what’ve you got to say, you——”

“And don’t say that, either,” said Frank. “Just keep cool a minute. Some one else in the world can be just as right as you are. That dog was shot just as it was making a wild leap at one of these girls. See the foam all over its head? The dog was mad, and I killed it before it could hurt one of these girls.”

By this time the other two men had come up to where the crowd was standing, one of them being close to Frank.

Frank saw this and stepped farther away, thus putting the distance, several yards, between himself and anyone else.

“That dog was not mad—that dog was worth two hundred dollars, and you’ve got to pay for it!” yelled the man, anger breaking out in every tone, every movement.

“I beg your pardon, mister——”

“Jeek, that’s my name. Fordham Jeek, from Bellport, young fellow, and you’re going to pay me for that dog.”

The name of this man was familiar to all the boys. They had heard of him on several occasions when down at Bellport, and had also heard of him from a certain element around Columbia.

He was a race-track follower, not of the higher type, but one of those about whom there is usually some question, some whispered rumor that will not quite stand the scrutiny of daylight or repeating aloud—a reputation which cannot be called savory.

Those who have followed Frank Allen from the time of the story, “Frank Allen’s Schooldays,” the first volume of the series, down to the volume just previous to this story, which was “Frank Allen and His Motor Boat,” know that Frank Allen was an upstanding boy who could think straight and always fairly, one who did his utmost in anything at which he went, a boy who was popular among his schoolmates and also among the older people, primarily because he was not given to conceit nor bombast, but was always just a wholesome, healthy, American boy who loved the out-of-doors, who was honest and square in all his dealings, and who, though a leader in athletics, was also a leader in his studies at school.

For a long minute Frank thought over the attitude of this man Jeek, of the situation with his two cronies present, and he noticed they were a rough looking pair.

“Mr. Jeek,—” Frank spoke in a low tone of voice, though not a tone of quaver nor of weakening in it—“I haven’t the slightest idea of paying for that dog. I am sorry, yes. I am, truly, because I love dogs as much as you do.”

“Love dogs, me eye!” yelped Jeek. “What did you kill a two hundred dollar dog for—you—you——”

“I killed that dog, as I told you, because it was mad and because it was making a wild leap to bite one of these girls. It had run around them in a wide circle, foaming at the mouth, and would have done serious injury. It was actually leaping straight for one of the girls when I shot.” Frank calmly recited the general incident.

“Your name is Allen, isn’t it? I’ll make your father pay for this dog, young fellow.”

“No, you won’t do that,” quietly replied the boy. “And you’ll not make me pay, either. That dog was mad.”

“It was not mad! You’re lying, just lying to get out of it. I’ll make you pay or I’ll make your father pay, or I’ll make you pay in a way you’ll never forget!” wildly yelled Jeek, as he turned to leave. “Just put this in your pipe, young smart aleck—you’ll pay in a way you’ll never forget!”

With that the three men departed. As they reached the next hillock on their way to the road, Jeek turned:

“Two hundred dollars by to-morrow or you’ll regret the day you ever saw me!” he yelled, shaking his fist.

A minute later the boys and girls heard the poorly timed explosions of a cheap automobile on the road.

CHAPTER III
A BIG REWARD IS OFFERED

“Well—that’s that!” said Lanky Wallace as the sounds of the car died away.

“I don’t know whether that’s that or something else,” Frank replied. “That fellow Jeek doesn’t look good to me, and the two fellows he had with him looked as if they’d rather knock a fellow in the head than eat a square meal.”

The girls were still trembling over the excitement of the mad dog and its subsequent shooting, and the arrival of the men with their threats of harm.

Frank wished to dispel the gloom which had fallen on the little party, and now proposed that they continue with the nutting. On the other hand Minnie Cuthbert proposed that the boys go on with their target practice, the girls to sit and watch the contest. But now the boys seemed more inclined to gathering nuts than to gathering target scores.

“I believe that grove over further toward the river ought to have some fine nuts, and I don’t think any others have been after them, because it’s rather rough getting there,” suggested Frank, nodding toward the Harrapin River.

The entire party decided at once on going, for, like merry, happy young folks, it did not matter so very much that they found many nuts—not so much as the good time and the adventure of hunting for them.

Up and down, over little hillocks and through brush-covered glens, sometimes moving in a bunch and often moving single file through narrow places, they made their way through the woods until they came to the bank of the Harrapin and then turned upstream.

“There is the grove!” Frank pointed up the river a short distance, and, from where they stood, the little party saw that it was a fine grove for nutting.

Five minutes later they realized that Frank’s guess was good—that no one else had come through this rough woods to get the nuts.

In the meanwhile heavy clouds had drawn across the skies, finally permitting the broad expanse of gray, snow-filled clouds to predominate over the blue.

Several times Lanky and Frank looked up through the clearings and had noted the coming of a fall storm.

It was getting very much cooler, with the gray clouds hanging lower and lower, but the merry laughing and talking, jesting and snatches of song drowned out any thought or fear of getting caught in a storm.

The boys had filled their pockets and their hats with nuts, the hats having been set aside, all in a row beside a tree. And now the first little flakes of snow began falling.

“The first of winter,” said Ralph West. “It won’t be long before skating and sleighing will be fine.”

Very shortly they prepared to go home, but stopped at the spot where target practice had been started long enough to try a few more shots.

“Let me shoot once!” cried Minnie when it was Frank’s turn at the target. “I want to shoot a bear.”

She took Frank’s repeating rifle, and, after being shown by Frank how to keep it pointed away from the others and towards the target, she lifted it to her shoulder, closed the wrong eye, and tried to sight.

“I can’t see anything!”

While the laughing and joking continued, Frank taught Minnie how to sight along the rifle, how to hold it properly, and after many rather grotesque attempts, she took careful aim and fired.

At the crack of the rifle she thrilled with the pleasure of it, though startled to think she had started a bullet on its way to the target.

“Where did it go? Where did it hit?” she cried.

“Last I saw of it it was on its way up the river!” called Lanky Wallace. “You know, Minnie, it went right over the top of that tree,” he added, pointing high in the air.

But, undaunted, she tried again, and this time the target showed a hole, though at the outer ring.

A few more shots were fired, with Minnie gradually learning, for she was hitting the target or close around it each time.

All things must have an end, and finally they started toward home, burdened with nuts, though the distance to town was not great.

As they trooped in a group down the broad walk of the avenue toward Frank’s house, whither it had been determined they would go for a short while, the girls to make fudge while the boys cracked the nuts, they spied Mr. Allen, Frank’s father, coming slowly along the street from town.

Helen left the others and ran ahead to meet her father.

Mr. Allen, who had almost lost his life in the fire at his department store on the night of the robbery of Mrs. Parsons, and to save whose life Frank had raced his Rocket down the Harrapin River to the town of Coville to obtain a heart stimulant which could not be found in Columbia or near-by towns, still carried a heavy stick. He leaned on this and he and Helen waited at the front walk for the others.

“How do you feel, dad,” said Frank, coming up with the crowd.

“Fine. Getting stronger every day. What have you been doing—target practice, nutting, and all that? Fine! It’s worth while to be young.”

Frank asked how repairs were going on at the store, and learned that the work was almost finished. The place had been quite seriously damaged by fire and water in the conflagration, and the cellar timbers had been weakened to a very considerable extent. It was the weakening of these timbers during the fire that had caused the accident to Mr. Allen.

Into the house trooped the crowd, led by Frank. The noise of the young folks called Mrs. Allen to the front of the house, with her long apron as evidence that she had been in the kitchen getting something good to eat ready for her brood.

“Out of the kitchen, mother!” called Helen, as she ushered every one in. “We’re making fudge while the boys crack the nuts, and you and dad are to wait in the living room until we’re done.”

So it went, and in a short while the girls came into the spacious front room with the plates of chocolate fudge, while the boys brought in a few extra nuts beyond those which had been used in the fudge, with salt generously sprinkled over them.

It was Helen who told the story of the mad dog, and of Frank’s having killed it, and it was Minnie Cuthbert who continued the story by telling about Fordham Jeek, of Bellport, and his threats.

“What about it, Frank?” asked Mr. Allen. “Shall we pay him for the dog? It’s too bad to have a fine dog killed.”

“Dad,” replied Frank, “paying that fellow Jeek two hundred dollars or any other sum for the dog won’t bring the dog back to life, will it? If a dog is a menace to human life, then we must get rid of the dog. That dog was a menace at the time it was shot. My decision is that there is nothing to be paid.”

“Is that the man who is a race-track follower?” asked Mr. Allen. And on getting an affirmative reply he went on: “He’s a slippery eel, if what I have heard is true. And, besides being slippery, I suppose he is a little to be feared, too.”

“I’ve no fear of him, dad” said Frank. “I have found that when a man does a whole lot of threatening he isn’t dangerous in the open.”

“That’s just it, my boy,” quietly replied the elder Allen. “If he were dangerous in the open he would have made you promise to pay for the dog right then—or fought.”

“There’s Mr. Van Kirk!” came a sudden cry from Helen, as she saw the rich old man, thin and straight as an arrow, more like a young soldier in stature than anything else, though he invariably carried a crooked hickory stick in his right hand. “Let’s call him in. I love to hear him talk!”

“Sure,” said Mr. Allen, craning his neck to look out the window. “Tell Jacob to come in here.”

With that Frank’s sister ran to the door and hailed the lonely old man of Columbia, a man who had seen the latter part of the Indian wars in the West country, who had been a huntsman all his life, and who knew the ways of the wild.

All the young folks gave him a hearty welcome when he came in and shook hands with Mr. and Mrs. Allen, and then with all the others.

“Mr. Van Kirk,” said Frank, as he saw the gray-haired old gentleman properly seated on one of the most comfortable of the large easy chairs, “we boys are going to a camp pretty soon and we are just wondering if you can’t give us some advice.”

“Well, Frank, I guess that is about as easy for me to do as for most folks. Advice is the finest and worse thing in the world. Fact is, anything that’s free is about worthless. Where are you going to camp?”

They told him of the offer made by Mrs. Parsons up at Old Moose Lake, just on the edge of the mountains.

The lined face of the gray old hunter was very expressive of emotions, the eyes twinkled and around them came the slowly formed wrinkles of a smile as he lifted his hand to the long beak of a thin nose and stroked it carefully.

“Tell you, Frank. If you’re going up to Old Moose Lake you’ve got a prize to look for. I wish I could go up there myself! There’s a big bull moose, a tremendous fellow and a fighter, too. Parsons and I saw him last just before Parsons died. I have been told he is still there. He’s a monster. Tell you what I’ll do——”

He paused while the boys listened with their mouths open, their eyes glistening in rapt attention.

“I’ve got a little extra money that I’d like to spend. I’ve got it in for that old bull moose—he almost got me the last time I was there. I’ll offer a hundred dollars to the boy among you who brings down that old fellow!”

A hundred dollar prize put up by this champion old hunter to the boy who would get that big bull moose!

CHAPTER IV
JEEK THREATENS AGAIN

It was the day of the last football game of the season. Not much of a day to speak of, either. It was cold, drear, the skies were leaden colored and heavy, and, with a north wind blowing down the field while flakes of snow whirled and twisted on their way to the earth, it was not an altogether pleasant game.

It was a game that had not been intended, but on account of the attitude which the town of Coville, located down the river and on the opposite bank, had taken during the season, there was little else for the boys of Columbia to do but to grant an after-season game.

“We can play it through and end the season,” said Frank Allen. “But I am fearful that the minds of several of the fellows won’t be as much on the game as on the camping expedition in a few days.”

The morning had opened with an attempt at a drizzle, which turned quickly to sleet, and the field was holding out the promise of being heavy and slippery.

By the middle of the morning, though, when the boys had become accustomed to the thought of playing their last game on a field that would not allow much individual fast work, the wind from the north came suddenly in.

At noon the mud of the morning had frozen hard, the skies had gathered lower and turned colder in their appearance, while the snow flakes drifted and whirled and twisted, first up, then down, sideways, hither and yon, touching the ground and being blown into little drifts against buildings, fences, sidewalks, trees and even foot and hoof-prints in the streets.

It was an enthusiastic crowd, but not a large one, that watched the final game. Coville tried hard to break through the impregnable line of Columbia, but it was a useless attempt.

However, there was compensation evident, for Columbia did not find it at first an easy task to get down the field against these warriors of Coville. It was in the third quarter that the first touchdown was made, after battering the Coville line so often that a soft spot was worn in it—and then the game went swiftly over to Columbia. The morale of Coville broke with the initial touchdown, and the fierce defensiveness of Coville broke against the onslaughts of the boys of Columbia who, led by a thinker, smashed, battered and wore down one place in the line.

“Glad we played you,” said Frank as he shook hands with the Coville captain. “You’ve got a good team, captain, and next year all these schools along the river are going to have a hard time even to hold you.”

“It’s good of you to say so, Allen,” replied the husky young Covillian. “We didn’t make much impression on you to-day, though.”

“Yes, you did! You made us use up two quarters trying to make a place where we could go through. And you held us so that we couldn’t go around. And you stopped most of our attempts to pass the ball. I’ll say you did mighty well. It’s just that we have played so long together we know what the other fellow is thinking and doing every second.”

Frank felt this way, else he would not have spoken to his adversary. It would be different in another year, when the Columbia team would be broken up and scattered, and the same team work would no longer exist.

“I hear you fellows are going in camp up on Old Moose lake,” said the Coville captain as they walked away from the field arm in arm. “I’ve heard some great stories of camping up there. They say the fishing is simply great. And, say, have you heard the story of the old bull moose that so many men have tried to get? My father told me yesterday that he had been there twice with parties who wanted to get him, but they say he is as wise as a fox.”

Frank listened to this with eager ears, for the story which Mr. Van Kirk had told them was the first he had ever heard of this monster of the woods. He asked several questions, but the boy from Coville very quickly exhausted his store of knowledge.

That evening, in the front room of the Allen home, with no one to interrupt, Frank and his three chums went carefully over all the preparations for the trip.

“If it keeps up the way it is and doesn’t turn any colder,” said Frank, “we’ll go by water up to Todds, using the Rocket. But if it turns much colder in the next two days and if the river freezes over, it looks to me as if skates would take us most of the way.”

“Do you know the exact way?” Buster Billings asked.

“Sure!” Frank replied. “I’ve got it right here on this sketch. It’s a sketch that Mr. Parsons used to have, and Mrs. Parsons gave it to me only yesterday. See here?” He pulled from his pocket a piece of paper which had been used until the folds had worn, and then had been pasted on a sheet of cloth. “We go up the Harrapin to Todds, and there we leave the boat—unless we skate, in which case we get off the river and take to land. From there it is a straight trip eastward through the mountains by trail to the lake. I don’t know what all these marks are, but I presume they are other camps along the trail at different places in the mountains where there are other lakes.”

The matter of food was discussed, but there was little to be carried, since Mrs. Parsons had promised to send up food to add to the store already at the camp.

“So, you see, fellows,” went on Frank, “our rifles, fishing outfits, heavy clothes, a couple of good ropes, plenty of ammunition, plenty of matches, a couple of flashlights, one or two compasses, and skates are about all we’ll need.”

The boys all agreed that it was the better plan to travel light.

“To-morrow morning I have to make a trip up-river a short distance with the Rocket, and you fellows can be gathering together all the things that we need and checking over the list. Lanky, suppose you act as secretary to this expedition, and make out the list and see that every fellow has his part.” Frank Allen was strictly the leader, the one who thought things out, and so it held in this case.

It was just after breakfast the next morning that Frank went to Minnie Cuthbert’s home and asked her to go on the trip up the river with him.

“Just a little trip on an errand for dad. He says he would rather I would go than any one else, and I want to try out the Rocket before we start to the camp,” he said as he invited her to join him.

Minnie accepted at once, and donned a heavy coat and close-fitting hat, looking bright, lithe and active, as she skipped down the steps to come alongside Frank for a brisk walk to the wharf.

“I have a package I want you to take with you to your camp,” Minnie said to Frank when the Rocket was well under way.

Curious, naturally so, Frank asked what the package contained, but Minnie refused to divulge the proposed contents.

They fell to chatting gaily over the various little happenings of “the crowd,” as the motor boat, under medium speed, facing into a brisk, chilly wind, glided easily through the water.

“Have you heard anything more from that big brute whose dog you killed?” she suddenly asked, changing the trend of the conversation.

Frank told her he had heard nothing.

“But you’re going to hear from him, Frank,” she went on. “He had a mean look in his eye that day. I heard father say something last night that didn’t sound good. He said that Jeek was a dangerous character and that the only reason he was not in jail was that others were afraid to tell the truth about him.”

“Oh, well,” Frank turned the subject off lightly, “I hardly expect any trouble. You know, we sent the doctor up there to look at the dog.”

“You hadn’t told me. What did he say?”

“He told me,” replied Frank, “that the dog was mad without doubt. He said, when I asked him about the season, that frequently a high-spirited dog went mad at other seasons than mid-summer, though the cases were rare. But, the point that I was most interested in was that he signed a statement and gave it to me to the effect that the dog was mad when killed.”

“What good will that do if that brute causes you trouble?” she asked.

“Well,” returned Frank good-naturedly, “it shows that I didn’t do anything so very wrong when I shot the dog.”

Frank saw the landing to which he was headed only a short distance away and sent the Rocket in toward shore.

A farmhouse stood back on the right bank of the Harrapin, a well-kept place. A long motor boat, loaded with packs which resembled the supplies of a camping party, was lying alongside the landing place, taking up every available foot of space.

Carefully, slowly, Frank eased the Rocket up to the spot, trying to see a place where he might touch. There was none.

Whereupon, he brought the Rocket alongside the other boat, sliding as easily as he could against it, but bumping it, nevertheless.

Then he took one end of the rope and stepped on to the other boat, from there to the landing, and carefully tied. Minnie very gingerly stepped into the other boat, too, and came ashore.

“Hi, there! What’s the matter? Got no sense? Get that skiff of yours away so I can get out. What do you mean locking me in that way? Trying to hog the river?”

Frank turned to see whose was this heavy, coarse, fierce voice, and faced Fordham Jeek!

“Oho, it’s you, eh? What’re you trying to do? Get stuff out of my boat?” and the big fellow showed his yellow teeth and pushed his head forward from the broad shoulders.

Frank was looking him straight in the eye, while two shifty men stood behind the man from Bellport.

“Best thing we can do for you, young fellow, is to throw you into the river. What’s on my boat that you want?” the big man kept on.

“Listen, you!” returned Frank, calm of voice and cool. “You’ve said just about enough. I’m here to attend to some business and not to have you throwing insults.”

“Don’t talk to your betters that way, you low-down dog killer!” yelped Jeek.

“Move along, big boy,” quietly answered Frank. “I’m not hunting for trouble. Want to get out? I’ll move off while you get away,” with which he motioned Minnie aboard, followed her, and backed the Rocket.

“Thought you’d change your tune!” sneered Jeek. “You ain’t paid for the dog yet. Going to pay for it? What? Better pay in money or I’ll take it out of your hide.”

Frank kept silent. He circled around and came back to the landing as the other boat pulled away.

“Oh, Frank, he’s a dreadful man! Better keep your eyes open or he’ll do you harm,” remarked Minnie, when they were again alone.

“Don’t worry, Minnie,” was Frank’s answer. “He won’t dare do anything very bad.”

But in this Frank Allen was mistaken.

CHAPTER V
“I’ll FIX HIM YET!”

“Twelve o’clock and all’s well!” cheerily sang out Lanky Wallace as the clock struck in the City Hall tower.

Four energetic lads, Frank Allen, Lanky Wallace, Paul Bird and Buster Billings, had packed everything they needed on board the Rocket, swaying gently to and fro in the Allen boathouse on the Harrapin River, at the foot of Main street in Columbia.

It had been planned to get away at noon, and they were now ready.

“Everything’s ready!” said Frank. “Ease her out.”

The Rocket slid gently, easily, gracefully out of the “well” and was promptly caught by the current of the river.

Lanky threw the flywheel over, the chug of the motor was the immediate response, for they had spent a half-hour tuning the cold motor up.

The practiced hand of Frank Allen, commander-in-chief of the Old Moose Lake expedition, turned the wheel, and the nose of the lithe little craft stood up-river.

“Right on time. I hope that’s a good omen,” observed Frank. “We’re off for an exciting time if our hopes hold up.”

During the middle of the morning Mr. Van Kirk, who had hunted in practically every wild in the United States, whose rifle had always been ready and accurate, whose knives were on exhibit in his room, each with a special history of moments of peril and of success, came down to the wharf and there chatted with the boys on the eve of their putting out to camp on Old Moose Lake, where they hoped they might come in contact with the big moose bull for the capture or killing of which the old hunter had offered a goodly reward.

“We’ll bring you the antlers,” said Frank, during the talk.

“I don’t want the antlers, but I do want to see them. The boy who gets the prize is the one who should have the antlers. And they’ve got a spread of almost five feet,” said Mr. Van Kirk.

“Five feet! That’s a whole lot of spread for the antlers to have!” exclaimed Frank, who had heard a great deal in the last few days about moose and a little about this particular bull.

“Yes. And this old fellow is a giant, too!” the old fellow replied. “I don’t need to describe him to you. You’ll know him when you see him. He’s the king of that territory, actually the monarch of all he surveys.”

Thus it was that the boys, as they chugged up the Harrapin, had their minds full of the old moose bull that had been the cause of many hunts and that had outfought and outwitted many attempts at capture.

The air was cutting cold on the deck of the Rocket, with the breeze blowing downstream while they were making their way against it. A sky banked with lead-gray clouds presaged snow before they got very far. Along the bank of the river most of the bushes and trees had lost their leaves, the skeleton branches thrust out from the shoreline like long, bony fingers of crooked shape, quivering and shaking as the chill winds struck them.

“The only thing warm around here is the motor,” said Lanky. “I wouldn’t mind being a motor to-day myself.”

“What time do you think we’ll reach Todds?” asked Paul Bird.

Frank suggested that they should reach the little settlement on the upper reaches of the Harrapin late in the afternoon—it should not be more than a four-hour ride.

Finally they passed the last of the spots along the river to which they had become accustomed, and now Frank was more watchful of his helmsmanship.

“There’s the snow starting!” cried Buster Billings, reaching out for a tiny flake which drifted around in the wind.

In ten minutes more the cohorts of which that small flake had been the forerunner came upon them, and the wind’s velocity increased slightly.

“Wow! Looks at if we’re going to plow the snow to the lake!” remarked Lanky, dancing from one foot to the other on the deck.

“It has every appearance of it right now,” replied the boy at the wheel. “But it ought to begin snowing. Goodness knows it’s about time for winter to start. We’ve been having little flecks of snow for several days.”

“Well, it’s started now,” and Lanky pointed up-river where, as rain often does, the snow was falling heavily. It appeared, from this distance, as if a wall of impenetrable thickness was built up against them.

The gray clouds came lower and lower, seemingly hanging almost to the water, darkening the river so that it looked as if evening were upon them, but, as a compensation, the wind died down somewhat. Another hour passed. The deck of the Rocket was well covered with snow, but the motor had not missed a single stroke.

As evening drew on, as the clouds continued hanging low, the boys saw, through the snow, the place which had been described as Todds—little more than a landing place at the upper stretches of the river, the outpost ahead of the trails across the mountains to the east.

As the Rocket drew in close to shore and came alongside the heavy logs of the landing place, they heard a hail from a long, low, rambling building and saw a bewhiskered man, old in looks behind the beard, but youthful in his agile bound as he came leaping down the hewn log steps and took charge.

“Mighty glad to see you, boys. Where are you going?” he called out heartily as he shook hands in a big, frank way.

“Camping over on Old Moose Lake,” said Frank. “Came up from Columbia this afternoon and going to tie up here until we are ready to go back.”

“Fine! Fine! Come along in and get warmed up. I’ll take care of the boat and the packs. Just get in there by the fire,” and he waved a hand toward the door from which he had come.

Within the place a great log fire was burning in an open fireplace, and two men, dressed in heavy woollen shirts and wool-topped boots, turned to nod a hearty welcome as the lads trooped in.

“Going to Old Moose Lake, eh?” one of the men asked, when told by the boys that was where they were headed. “Well, it’s a great place right now. What camp, did you say—old man Parsons’s?”

Both men were interested in the boys’ tale of their big camping expedition, and Frank led up to a question about the old bull moose they had heard so much about.

“Old King, eh?” laughed one of the men, filling his pipe after having knocked out the ashes on the heel of his heavy boot. “By the great horn spoon, you’ll never get old King. That’s a foxy critter. Say, old man Van Kirk—know him? Old man Van Kirk came up here a couple of seasons ago, before he had that accident, and old King almost got him for true. Yes, sir, I was up there with him, just north of Old Moose Lake, and that bull moose nigh got him.”

This whetted the appetite of the boys for more news, and they got plenty of it—a great deal of it being legend, pieces of tales that had been handed about from one guide to another, for it seemed that the big moose bull had been roaming the woods in that section for a long time.

When they sat down to a meal spread for all on one large table, with a roaring log fire warming up the dining room, oil lamps hanging from the rafters overhead to light the place, the run of conversation about the moose kept on, with these two guides, not so old, as the boys soon discovered, adding more and more to the stories. Frank caught the wink of one of them during a particularly exciting recital of an episode, and he then took all they said with a large pinch of salt.