They crossed the snow to the front porch of Bluff Lodge. This porch extended clear across the log building and gave a magnificent view up and down the lake. Twenty-five yards from the porch the bluff dropped fourteen feet straight down to the waters of Arrowtip.
“Dandy place to sit and look out over the lake on a warm summer day,” Kent commented, as Barry fitted his key to the lock.
“It certainly is,” his chum agreed. “This lodge ought to be worth quite a bit of money. It would be, too, if it weren’t getting a bad name.”
By this time Barry had turned the key, and with a grinding sound the bolt shot back. The boys crowded closer to him, anxious for their first glimpse inside the haunted lodge building. Barry swung the door open wide, and they walked in, glancing around with interest.
They found themselves in a wide hall that was square and roomy. A big fireplace took up a wide space on one side of the wall, and over it hung the head of an elk. Pictures adorned the walls, and over a door leading into the other part of the lodge hung an old flintlock gun. A flight of stairs led to the loft.
“This is a dandy place,” remarked Mac, as they stood and looked around.
“I wonder if this is the main room, where they sit around the fire?” Kent asked.
Barry moved to the door and pushed it open. “No, this seems to be the living room,” he announced, stepping through the doorway. The others followed and found themselves in a big living room, furnished with several chairs and a long couch that was placed in front of the fireplace. Shelves of books and some animal skins were to be seen in this room, and it was unmistakably the guest gathering place.
“This is more like it,” Tim remarked, as they explored the room. “That other place is just the front hall. Gosh, but it is cold in here!”
Beside the fireplace there were window seats, and Barry sat down and pulled the curtains aside. “You can see our place from here,” he said. “This certainly is a nice lodge, and I’d like to own it.”
Kent opened a door from the living room, and they continued to explore. A long hall led to the kitchen at the back of the lodge, and from this hall three bedrooms and a dining room could be reached. It was indeed an unusually large log structure.
“Wouldn’t this be a great place to have a party?” Barry exclaimed, with enthusiasm.
“Boy, it surely would!” Kent agreed. He opened a door and looked into one of the bedrooms. “Look at those nice beds, and we are sleeping on the floor over at our cabin!”
Tim called their attention to a pump on the back porch. “Here we are, melting down snow, and a good pump close to us.”
“Bet it is frozen stiff,” Barry objected.
“Even so, if some hot water were poured down it to prime it, I believe that we could use it,” Tim said.
“Well, let’s get on upstairs,” proposed Barry. “We came over here to see about that window.”
They went down the hall and through the living room to the big hall. Barry led the way up the stairs until they came to a door. This was not hard to open, and they found themselves in the attic or loft space of the hunting lodge.
It was a large open space and seemed to be almost empty. A broken bobsled was over against one slope of the roof, and two dusty saddles hung from nails. There were only two windows in the upper section of Bluff Lodge, and one of them was slightly open. Barry crossed the floor of the attic and shut the window, peering out.
“Look at those prints in the snow,” he said. “It seems as though someone may have crossed the roof and come in this window. There is enough roof for anyone to walk on.”
“Then those tracks were made some time back,” reminded Kent. “We haven’t had any snow lately. You can see how the snow melted down into the tracks.”
“Yes, no doubt of it, the tracks are old,” Barry agreed.
Two chimneys rose straight through the attic, and Mac wandered around restlessly. The chimney from the lower hall took up little space, but the living-room chimney rose several feet to push its way through the roof. Mac walked around this brick column while the others looked out of the window toward their cabin.
Then they heard him utter an exclamation. They turned to see him motioning from around the corner of the chimney.
“Come here, you fellows! Look what I’ve found!”
Filled with curiosity, they joined him behind the tall chimney and found him pointing to a small pile of half-melted snow that showed on the floor. Barry knelt and touched it with his finger.
“It is snow, all right,” he announced.
“And that means that somebody has been in the lodge within the last few minutes, possibly while we were walking around downstairs!” Mac reminded them.
Somewhat startled at Mac’s words, the others looked around the loft and then at each other. The thought that some unknown person had been in the building, perhaps at the same time that they were downstairs, was not a comforting one, and they felt the grip of excitement and uncertainty. Barry glanced up at the roof above them.
“No hole there for this snow to drop through, and we haven’t any snow on our shoes,” he murmured. “It surely looks like Mac is right.”
“If somebody was here, how did he get out?” Tim asked, peering into the dark corners of the loft. “Think he slipped down the roof?”
“It would be easy for anyone to go out the front door while we were in the kitchen,” Barry reminded them. “If anybody was hiding in the lodge, he could probably hear us talking and then sneak down into the hall and outdoors while we were in the rear.”
“That’s just what has happened,” Kent exclaimed with conviction.
Barry crushed the snow under his fingers. “It hasn’t been here very long,” he gave his opinion. “You didn’t have any of it on your shoes, did you, Mac?”
The Ford twin shook his head. “No, and I discovered it before I had walked that far. I wasn’t sure at first what it was, and I had to touch it to make sure. If that fell off of somebody’s clothes, then somebody was here just a few minutes ago.”
“Right you are,” Kent nodded. “We ought to go down and look through the house again.”
“And the sooner the better,” seconded Barry, rising from the floor. “I must let Dad know about this.”
Led by Kent, the boys went downstairs and made a hasty search through the lodge, but found nothing. It was with considerable excitement that they looked into each room, not at all certain as to what they would find, but no one was in the place. At last they gathered on the front porch and looked up and down the lake, but no one was in sight.
“Let’s take a look around the grounds,” Tim suggested, and they made a tour of the place. In the rear, back of the kitchen and in a separate building, they found a variety of garden tools and odds and ends, but the shed itself was empty of all life.
The timber came close to the back of the lodge, and if anyone had been bent on vanishing from sight in that direction, it would not have taken him long to do so. Going around on the far side of the lodge, the boys saw that it was more rugged land than that on their side. A series of ravines and gullies ran beside the lodge, and less than an eighth of mile away rose the scarred side of the old abandoned quarry.
“Pretty wild country on this side,” said Barry, as they halted under one of the bedroom windows to look around.
Tim approached the gully closest to the house and gazed down into it. “People who camp in this lodge don’t want to go walking at night,” he said. “Not in this direction, anyway. They had better——Well, I’ll be jiggered!”
“What’s the matter?” they asked him.
“Looks like our sled down there! It is!”
The others joined him at the edge of the gully. Down below them a few feet they could see the sled, partly turned over, the front runners buried under some snow-laden bushes. Tim slipped down into the depression and located the rope.
“So there is where he hid the sled!” Kent exclaimed.
“And we tramped for miles looking for it!” Barry shook his head.
Tim toiled up the slope, dragging the sled after him. “He did more than hide it there,” he informed them, handing the rope to Mac to pull. “Whoever put it there just threw it in. One front runner is broken.”
Barry helped Mac pull the sled up. It was a low flat wooden affair with steel runners. Part of the wood over the front runner had been smashed.
“Some nerve on the part of whoever did it,” growled Barry, as they examined it. “I’d like to knock the stuffing out of the man!”
“Provided a man did it,” Kent said.
“Well, somebody did it, and I suppose it is the same one who has been prowling around this lodge. I mean to find this ghost or whatever it is that is making the trouble at this place.”
“It looks as though we ought to do some watching at night,” Mac suggested, as they made their way around to the front of the lodge.
“We’ll talk it over a little later,” Barry promised, locking the front door of the lodge. “We’ve got to get our firewood in and prepare for the night. These days are short.”
Cutting wood and preparing for the night took them the rest of the brief winter afternoon, and then supper followed. The sun had gone down a dull and misty red, and the wind was moaning through the trees. There was every indication of a storm, and the boys were hoping that they would not be snowed in.
“I’ll put a splice on that broken sled runner,” Kent offered, as they sat at the supper table. He was the best carpenter of them all, and they were willing to let him do the mending.
“All right,” Barry agreed. “That will fix it so that we can use it on the way home. Whoever took our sled didn’t steal the canvas or the frying pan and the long coffee-pot handle, so he must have taken it just to scare us off.”
“He just gave the sled a polite boot into the gully,” grumbled Mac.
“Yes, and that gets under my skin,” cried Barry. “He came and stole our sled before he knew why we had come here to camp. I wouldn’t think so much of it if he had done that after we had been through the lodge, but he didn’t even give us that long. Something has got to be done, and we might just as well decide what it will be right here at this council of war.”
“Maybe we ought to take turns sitting up and looking out of the window,” Mac gave as his idea.
“A pretty cold, thankless job,” Kent shook his head. “Hang it all, we didn’t do a thing today about making better beds, and so far I haven’t enjoyed my sleep.”
“I’ll tell you what I have been thinking,” Barry said slowly. “I believe that we ought to move into the lodge.”
There was a moment of silence as the others considered his words, slightly startled at the proposition. “But your Dad told you that he wanted us to stay in this cabin,” Tim reminded.
“Yes, he did at that time,” Barry agreed. “But the whole situation has changed since then. If we are to get on the track of the mysterious spook of the lodge, we won’t do it from here. We ought to be right inside of that hunting lodge.”
Again the boys were silent, considering it. “I know that we will be a whole lot more comfortable on those beds over there than we are here,” Kent said.
“We’ll be a lot better off in several ways,” Barry pointed out. “It is a bigger place, and we’ll have more elbow room. Then we’ll be closer to the actual scene of His Majesty the Spook’s activity.”
“That spook gets snow on him, same as any human,” grinned Mac.
“Of course,” nodded Barry. “Because he is human. It’s just some mean person up to a slippery game, but who it is or why he is at it, nobody knows. And if we are going to find out, we’ll have to hustle, because our time here is going by fast.”
“Let’s move over there tonight!” Tim suggested.
For a moment they were swayed by the thought, and then Kent and Barry shook their heads together. “Too much of a job at this time of night,” Kent said.
“We haven’t much to move,” Tim protested.
“That’s true,” Barry agreed. “But the lodge is too cold. We’ll have to spend a full day warming up the place. We have only two lanterns, and while I noticed some lamps over there, I don’t know whether they have any oil in them or not. We’ll do better to wait until morning.”
“Taking it by and large, I believe it is the best thing to do,” commented Mac. “This little cabin does very well as a shelter from the storm, but it isn’t very comfortable.”
“It hasn’t been well taken care of,” answered Kent, looking around. “Some of the chinking is out between the logs, and that lets the air in. This table is thick with grease and looks like it never was cleaned.”
“Mr. Bronson has been renting it out for a long time,” explained Barry. He got up from the table. “After we have washed the dishes I’ll write a letter to my father and tell him that we have decided to move into the lodge—in fact, I’ll tell him everything. He might even run up here himself.”
“I hope we know something more definite by the time he does,” observed Mac.
Later in the evening Barry wrote a letter to his father relating events in detail and informing him of their contemplated move. While he was busily engaged at this, the other three boys were working on the broken runner board. Kent had decided to cut out a new one from a piece of board which he had found in the kitchen, and with the aid of ax and knife he managed to carve out a fair section of runner board. With the help of the twins he fitted it into place, and before long the job had been successfully completed.
Before they retired for the night Barry opened the door of the cabin and was surprised to see the soft white flakes falling. “It’s snowing,” he told his chums.
“Looks as though we are going to move into the lodge just in time,” Kent predicted.
“I hope that this doesn’t turn into a blizzard,” Barry thought.
The sight of the falling snow gave the boys a new channel for conversation, and they were slow about going to bed. They had put everything soft that they could find under their sleeping bags and looked forward to a fairly comfortable night in the log cabin. Since the snow had begun falling the air had become much warmer, and the inside of the little building was warm and inviting.
“It’s a thick, heavy snow,” Tim remarked, after peering out of the window.
“If anyone comes near the cabin tonight, we ought to see his footprints in the morning,” Mac said.
“Maybe not,” Kent denied. “If it keeps on snowing this way, any tracks would be covered up in a very short time.”
“If it kept up this way for a long time, we’d be snowed in here for a while,” Barry told them. “We might not get back to school in time.”
“That would break my heart!” Mac grinned.
“Don’t you want to know anything, you ignorant duffer?” Kent asked.
“I thought I knew about all there was to know,” Mac returned blandly.
“Then you’re smarter than most humans,” Barry retorted.
“I accept!” grinned the twin.
“We’ll ask Pa about that sometime,” said Tim, slipping inside the bag. “I bet he’ll have a different answer.”
The fire blazed up in the chimney, and the shadows leaped and darted on the walls. A split log popped, and a blazing ember shot out across the hearth and landed close to Kent’s sleeping bag. He put his arm outside of the bag and flicked it back into the fireplace.
“If any of you get hot in the night, you’ll know that a spark landed on you,” he said.
“If you know so much, what made that wood pop like that?” Barry asked Mac.
“Expansion. Heat expanded it and made it burst.”
“All right. What made that popping sound?”
“That is a secret that we scientific men keep to ourselves,” answered Mac soberly.
“I wish you’d all quit talking about such nonsense and let me go to sleep,” grumbled Kent. “I’m tired after our tramping around today.”
“Yes, let’s go to sleep,” Mac urged. “Tomorrow I’ll explain all these deep things to you!”
“Thanks!” said Barry. “We can hardly wait until we hear them!”
The others were as tired as Kent, and they were willing to drop their good-natured conversation and drift off into slumber. Nor did it take them long. They were active and healthy boys, and sleep was a thing that they needed and enjoyed. In a few moments they were all breathing deeply, and quiet settled over the Bronson cabin.
The fire continued to flare, and occasionally it popped, but no more embers left the chimney. The snow came down gently and settled on the frame of the window until the little panes became round from the clinging white flakes. The wind was rising slightly, and now and then a puff came down the chimney and caused the fire to leap and twist upward.
The slumbers of the mystery hunters were rudely broken into by a sudden medley of shots and yells. The boys woke up with a start, and as they did so two more shots rang out. Then stillness succeeded.
“What was that?” Barry asked, as they sat up in the bags and looked around in the semigloom. The fire had sunk down, and a glance at an old alarm clock that Kent had brought with him, and which stood on the stone chimneypiece, showed that it was a quarter of two.
“Shots,” was Kent’s answer, as he kicked his way out of the bag. “Several of them, and close to here, too.”
“I heard some yells,” put in Tim.
All four of them were now up and hastening into their clothes. Mac swiftly tossed some wood on the fire, and in the increasing light they hurriedly dressed. Barry peered out of the window as he pulled his sweater down.
“I don’t see anybody,” he said. “It is still snowing.”
Kent took his rifle from a nail upon which he had hung it, and handed Barry his. “I guess we had better take these with us,” he said. “No knowing who is out there, shooting around.”
“From the yells we heard, it sounds as though somebody was winged,” Mac said, as he took the shotgun that the twins shared between them. Tim placed his ax in his belt, and they were ready to go out into the night and investigate.
Barry opened the door, and they stepped out. It was still snowing, but the flakes were finer now, and there was a brisk wind that moaned through the tops of the trees and whipped the snow into whirling shapes and formations. The boys left the cabin cautiously, but no one challenged their coming, and they stood in the snow outside the door, their hands in pockets, feeling the change from the warm inside to the cold outdoors. Much snow had fallen since they had gone to bed.
For a moment they were silent, listening for any sound that might break the stillness or rise above the gusts of wind, but although they strained their powers of hearing, no sound reached them. Then a flash of light out on the lake caught their attention. It lingered only a moment and then was gone, and after a brief interval, it came again.
“Somebody is running across the ice!” Barry and Mac said in chorus.
“Yes,” Kent agreed. “And they have a flashlight that they are turning on every once in a while. Wonder who they are?”
“I’ll bet they are the ones that yelled,” said Tim.
“Heading for Rake Island,” Barry observed.
“Maybe whoever is putting on all the funny business around the lodge hides away on Rake Island,” Kent suggested. “We ought to search that place one of these days.”
“We will,” Barry promised. He glanced toward the dark hunting lodge. “Which way did those shots come from?”
“I’d say from just behind the lodge,” Tim answered.
“Seemed that way to me,” Kent agreed. “They were mighty close to this cabin of ours.”
“Let’s go over there and see if we can find anything,” Barry suggested.
“I’ll get the lantern,” Mac offered. “You fellows want your hats and gloves?”
They agreed heartily that they did, for the night air was penetrating, and before long the sandy-haired twin was back with the lantern and their warmer clothing. In a short time they set out across the open space toward the lodge, keeping a sharp watch on every side. The flashes no longer came from the lake.
Back of the lodge they flashed the lantern around the ground, looking for footprints, but the snow had been blown around in such a way as to make it impossible for them to find any. They did not waste many minutes in the hunt, as the cold was too keen, but soon gave it up and started back to the cabin.
“Nothing doing,” Barry announced. “And I’m not going to stay out here long. That wind feels like a knife. Me for the fire!”
His companions were of the same mind, and they were approaching the cabin when Tim stopped and fumbled into the snow. When he straightened up he held an object in his hand, and as soon as he had wiped it off he whistled.
“Hey! Look here, fellows. A rifle shell!”
The boys bent over his extended hand and examined the metal cartridge with interest. Then Kent began to brush through the snow in search of others. Before long he had found three more.
“This is where the fellow stood that fired those shots,” he announced.
“Pretty close to our cabin,” Barry said.
“These shells came out of a big rifle,” Mac observed. “Did you see that shell on the ground, Tim?”
“No, my foot struck it. I felt something harder than the snow, and I reached down to see what it was. As soon as I touched it, I had an idea what it was.”
Barry looked away in the direction of Rake Island, shrouded in the darkness. “It all means that somebody stood here and fired at least four shots from a rifle at someone else,” he said slowly. “The ones who were shot at scuttled away across the ice. I’d like to know what it all means.”
“Let’s get in around the fire and look these shells over,” Kent urged, and they were soon back in the cabin, grouping around the warm fire and looking at the empty cartridge curiously. The ones that Kent had found were exactly the same, and there was no doubt that they had all been shot from the same gun.
“It seemed to me that there were more than four shots, but perhaps I just imagined that,” Barry said, sitting down on the sleeping bag.
“The whole thing was so sudden and unexpected that I hardly know what did happen,” Mac admitted. “The shots were near us, too.”
“Almost outside of our window,” Kent nodded. “Gosh, that gives me something to think about, do you know it? The light of our fire would show anyone that we were here, and whoever fired the shots might have been protecting us. See what I mean?”
“Do you mean that those people who ran across the ice may have been looking in at us and were scared off by the shots?” Tim asked.
“Sure! Or maybe the ones who did the shooting were looking in at us and were disturbed. Of course, any way you look at it, it is all pure guesswork, and we know as much about it as we do about the whole mystery business.”
“I’m glad that we are going to move over into the lodge,” declared Barry. “That’s a bigger place, and I’ll feel safer in it.”
“Don’t forget, though, that the lodge is the home stamping ground for the spook,” Mac reminded him.
“I know it is, but we seem to have had a lot of visitors and prowlers around here. I don’t feel quite safe any more. If we did stay in this cabin, we’d have to build some sort of a shutter to put over that window, so that people couldn’t come looking in.”
“Do you believe it was any of Carter Wolf’s friends?” Tim inquired.
Barry smiled. “We’re trying to hang everything against his account, just because he has no use for us. No, I hardly think so. I wonder if any of his bunch carries a rifle big enough for these shells?”
“They might,” Kent said. “Some of his friends are sports and have good equipment. We know that he is somewhere near here, but I just don’t think that they had anything to do with it all.”
“Well, that artillery practice was too close to suit me,” Mac declared, as he began to get ready for bed again.
“I’m just wondering if anyone was hit or if they just yelled because they were scared,” murmured Barry, as the boys prepared to go to sleep again.
“I suppose we should have gone on down to the lake to see if anyone was hurt or not,” admitted Tim.
Mac placed fresh fuel on the fire, and they talked for another half-hour about the mysterious event of the night. The wind was rising and blowing more strongly, and the old cabin shook under the force of some of the blasts. At length the boys became quiet and sank away into deep sleep.
It seemed that they had scarcely closed their eyes when there came a thunderous booming crash that jarred the cabin. Something scraped down the roof and fell to the ground back of the lean-to kitchen. At the same time some stones fell into the fire, which had sunk to red embers, scattering it to right and left. The boys bounded up from their beds with rapidly beating hearts.
“What was that?” Tim shouted.
“Something hit the cabin,” Barry said, as he reached for his clothes again.
“Yes, and it took part of the chimney,” Mac pointed out. “I’ll get a light and we’ll see what it was.”
Kent threw the remaining wood on the fire, and Mac lighted the lantern. It was just five o’clock, an hour which rather surprised the boys, as it was still pitch dark outside. They dressed as quickly as possible, waiting for further sounds, but all was still.
“Do you suppose that somebody bumped against the side of the cabin?” Mac asked.
“Bumped it with a battering ram if he did,” Barry retorted. “That thump was on the roof. Let’s see what it was.”
He seized the lantern, and the others followed him out into the early-morning air. The blackness was growing faintly gray in the east, and before very long the sun would be up. But the boys were not interested in these things at that moment. They walked out to a place where they could look at the roof of the cabin.
One glance told the story. A big limb had blown down and landed on the roof, knocking off a corner of the chimney. Part of the limb had slid down the back part of the roof, but the heaviest portion was still balanced on the peak of the roof.
“A tree limb!” Kent cried. “We might have known it.”
“A big one, too,” Barry observed. “We’ll have to pull it down before we leave this cabin.”
“I thought the whole house was coming down when it hit,” Mac grinned.
“Are you going to go back to sleep?” Tim inquired.
“Sleep?” echoed Kent, in disgust. “Not for me! It’s morning, anyway. If we did go to sleep, something else would be sure to happen. I’m sleepy, but no more for me. What a fine night that turned out to be!”
Satisfied by their inspection, the boys now went back into the cabin and began to fix things in order. All of them felt sleepy and somewhat dragged out, but in no mood to return to the sleeping bags. Faint streaks of real daylight were spread across the sky, and a new day was at hand.
It was still snowing lightly, and the wind was cutting and sharp. Before long it was evident that there would be no sunshine that day. The sky was heavy and overcast. The trees were loaded with a mass of clinging white flakes, and the whole landscape was clothed in a simple beauty that the boys admired with enthusiasm.
“If the sun would come out, how this snow would flash and sparkle!” Kent remarked, as they tucked away the bedding and prepared to get breakfast.
“No sun today,” Barry predicted. “In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if we have more snow.”
“Going to move over into that lodge this morning?” Mac inquired.
“I guess so,” Barry nodded. “But first we want to go down to the lake and see if we can find any clues to what went on last night.”
“We ought to scout around a little and see if we can find anyone in the woods who did the shooting,” Tim suggested.
“We’ll do the best we can,” Barry assured them. “I want to get to the post office at Fox Point and mail my letter to Dad. We won’t be here much longer.”
“No, we won’t, worse luck,” sighed Kent. “I’d like to stay right here until we do solve the mystery.”
“Looks like we aren’t going to,” Mac shook his head. “It gets deeper all the time.”
“Somebody has got to get more wood,” Tim called from the lean-to. “Who are the brave lads who will volunteer to chop or die for their native land?”
“I’m brave, but this isn’t my native land,” Barry grinned.
“You’d better do it, Tim,” Mac suggested. “You’re always carrying a little hatchet around in your belt.”
“That’s no hatchet, that happens to be an ax,” growled Tim. “I’m all set to cook breakfast, and as it is going to be a tough job to cut wood under the snow, I’m calling for volunteers!”
“He’s honest about it,” commented Barry. “It is hard work, so he wants somebody else to do it.”
“I’ll do the chopping,” Kent said suddenly. “Come on, Mac, you go with me.”
Mac stared at him suspiciously. “You seem mighty anxious. Where are you going to find a log to cut into?”
“Upon the roof, my boy,” grinned Kent. “All we have to do is to toss a rope up and snake it down. Once it descends to the ground, we will fall on it tooth and nail and reduce it to kindling wood!”
Mac seized his ax with alacrity. “And that means that the next time wood is cut, those two have to cut it wherever they can find it, doesn’t it? That’s fine! Let’s go!”
“We’re sold,” Barry smiled at Tim. “The boys have put one over on us.”
Mac and Kent went to work at once on the limb that hung over the peak of the roof. Standing on Kent’s shoulders, the twin looped a rope over a jagged stump of a limb and then jumped to the ground. Both of them pulled on the rope and the limb came sliding down the roof and thudded to the ground.
“A good, dry piece of timber,” Kent exulted. “This will be easy to chop up for firewood.”
They fell to their task with a will and soon had an ever-growing pile heaped up close to the front door. Barry came out to get some of it, and Tim started the fire in the rusty stove. Before long the delicious smell of bacon drifted out to the wood-choppers. Mac stopped and sniffed with rapture.
“Boy, just smell that bacon! Isn’t that the finest aroma in the world?”
“It certainly is when you are out camping,” Kent granted. “Everything seems to taste so good when you are out in the open a whole lot.”
“Bacon, eggs, and coffee! What a combination! Say, while you fellows are at Fox Point today, why don’t you get some sausage?”
“We’ll ask Barry, or whoever goes, to get it.”
Breakfast was soon ready, and they tackled it with enthusiasm. Just as soon as the meal was over they set the cabin in order. All of them were anxious to get out and explore the lake front, but they were good campers and had an instinctive aversion to leaving the camp until it was in first-class condition. This was speedily done, and then they donned their outside coats and their hats and were ready to go.
“Taking guns?” Kent asked.
“Might as well,” Barry said. “Not that we expect to use them for defensive purposes, but we might see some game that we can knock over.”
They left the cabin and locked the door after them. “Nothing in there of value except our provisions, skates, and sled,” Mac remarked. “But I suppose it is best to lock up.”
“We’ll explore a little and then get back to our moving,” Barry proposed, as they plodded along through the snow down the slope to the lake. “We don’t want to spend another night in the Bronson cabin.”
They soon reached the shore of the lake and searched it for footprints or other clues, but were unable to find anything. Proceeding along the edge of the frozen water, they hiked almost as far east as the mouth of the Buffalo River. When they were opposite Rake Island, Kent came to an abrupt halt and pointed.
“Look, some fellows are on Rake Island. See them watching us?”
Glancing across the ice sheet, they saw five figures standing in a group, apparently looking in their direction. Just as they noticed them, the group on the little island started across the lake toward them. The boys at once halted.
“They are coming right at us,” Barry remarked.
“Doesn’t it look like Carter Wolf in the lead?” Tim asked.
Kent nodded. “Just what I thought. We’re in for trouble.”
“Five to four,” murmured Mac.
“Hold your horses,” Barry advised. “We don’t know what they want, and besides that we have guns and they haven’t anything in their hands. Don’t let them get near enough to take anything away from you. Maybe they only want to buy something.”
“I can’t very well picture Carter Wolf wanting to buy anything from us,” Kent shook his head.
The members of the island camp soon drew close to them, and there was no doubt that it was Carter Wolf and some of his friends from a neighboring town. These boys were expensively dressed, and Wolf wore a big fur coat and hat that looked odd as a camping outfit. They carried no weapons with them, and it was impossible to imagine what their object was.
They approached the mystery hunters, and the silence between the two groups was strained. Barry decided to make the advances.
“Good-morning,” he greeted.
The other boys made no answer, but they slowed up and finally stopped a few feet away. Wolf’s face wore a frown, and his companions stood slightly in back of him. They were all boys who did not look especially healthy, and the boys from the cabin knew that they were all drinkers and considered themselves to be good sports.
“You tried pretty hard to hit us last night, didn’t you?” Wolf began aggressively.
“We didn’t have anything to do with whatever happened last night,” Barry answered him. “You’ll have to tell us all about it.”
“We believe that,” sneered Wolf. “Just because you saw us sitting on the porch of that lodge, you blazed away at us. I can have you arrested for that.”
Kent looked at him coldly. “The fact of the matter, Wolf, is that we were asleep in the Bronson cabin at the time that shooting happened. We got dressed and came out as soon as we could, and you and your friends were running across the ice. We didn’t have a thing to do with it.”
“I suppose I’m to believe it or not,” scoffed the boy from the island.
Tim dug down into his Mackinaw pocket. “I guess we can soon settle that question,” he said. “Here are the empty shells that we picked up outside our cabin after the shooting. You can see that they are far too big for our little rifles, and you know that it wasn’t a shotgun that was fired at you. Need any further proof?”
It was evident that the boys from Rake Island did not, but they were in anything but a pleasant frame of mind. They were anxious to make trouble but had no ground to stand on. Wolf tried a new line of attack.
“Your father has charge of that lodge,” he accused Barry. “If anything had happened to us, he would have been responsible. We had been up the lake to a dance hall and came back late. All we did was to sit down on the porch of the lodge because Hodge here was unsteady——”
“Don’t be telling all you know,” spoke up a boy with a pasty, unhealthy-looking face.
“Well, anyway, somebody shot at us,” Wolf went on. “If we had been hit, your father would have had to pay for it.”
“I don’t think so,” Barry denied. “I guess you know that the lodge has the name of being haunted, and you were taking your own chances when you sat on the porch.”
“Some fine day our bunch will go up there and crash in,” Wolf boasted. “We’ll see what all this ghost business is.”
“If you can find out what it is, my father will be grateful to you,” Barry assured him. “But I wouldn’t crash into the lodge, if I were in your place.”
“Don’t give me advice, Garrison! I don’t need any, and if I did, I wouldn’t come to you for it. You know that if I ever get a chance to square accounts with you, I’m going to!”
“You haven’t any account to square,” Barry returned levelly. “You just think you have. We’re not looking for any trouble with you, Wolf, and the farther you stay away from us, the better we’ll like it!”
“I think we ought to give you fellows a good beating,” cried Wolf, starting forward. But a companion named Carl Voss pulled him back quickly.
“Come on back to camp and leave these kids alone,” he advised, his eyes upon the weapons hanging across the boys’ arms. “They didn’t shoot at us.”
Wolf allowed himself to be dragged away, but his eyes were sullen and revengeful. “Some day it will be my turn to crow,” was his parting word.
“Looks like you’re doing all the crowing right now,” murmured Tim, as they watched the other party start back to the island.
For a few moments the boys from the cabin camp watched the Rake Island boys walk across the ice, and then Barry turned away. “Come on,” he said. “We haven’t time to stand around idle. Remember that we want to move today, and already we have spent a good part of the morning.”
The other followed him, and they started back to the camp. “We’ve learned something, anyway,” Kent remarked.
“Yes, it was the Wolf bunch that was shot at,” Mac nodded.
“Still, we’re just as much as ever in the dark as to who did the shooting,” Tim reminded them.
“It looks to me as though whoever did the shooting did it to scare them off,” said Barry. “They weren’t hit and didn’t say anything about the shots going overhead. I guess that crowd didn’t have anything to do with taking our sled.”