Frank was feeling a bit anxious about Jerry. What if these reckless spirits, aggravated by their hot reception, should try to take it out on the person of the boy they hated? Two of them carried some manner of shotguns, and there was no telling what they might not be tempted to do.

When, however, he looked anxiously up into the tree where he had last seen Jerry, to his delight he found that the other had vanished completely from sight.

"Where's he gone?" asked Bluff, at this moment, he having apparently likewise just discovered the absence of the other chum.

"I don't know. Perhaps he's only hiding behind the trunk of the tree, or he may have found it hollow, like that other one, and slipped in. Watch what those fellows are up to. If they make a move to shoot at Jerry, we'll have to put in our oar," Frank answered with considerable feeling.

Pet Peters' crowd was plainly at a loss to know how they ought to proceed. They saw that hundred dollars reward dangling temptingly before their eyes, and could not bear the thought of letting it pa.s.s without straining themselves to the utmost to win it. All sorts of things they had wanted so long could be bought with that easy money, and they were not yet ready to give up their chances.

"Hi! Bill, you an' Sim git over here. I wanter have a spiel with yuh.

Them guns orter fetch our game out on ther knees, if yuh on'y use 'em steady. Kim over, an' you, too, Miser Lee. P'raps I kin use yuh!"

It was Pet bawling out, and that his word carried weight was manifest by the way in which the three fellows addressed hastened to cross over to where he stood back of the big tree that had the gaping hole in its trunk ten feet from the ground.

Frank could see them talking earnestly, and gesticulating as if to emphasize their words. Finally Pet seized the gun that one of the others carried, and taking a quick aim at the cabin he pulled the trigger.

"Bang! bang!" went both barrels.

The dead gra.s.s vanished from the little window under the charges of shot at such close quarters.

"Kim out o' that, an' surrender to the law!" bellowed Pet.

Frank laughed to himself at the words; it was more than comical to hear this boy, whose contempt for law and order had made him a marked character in Centerville, so loudly proclaim his sudden conversion.

Silence followed this peremptory command. Those within the cabin either did not care to answer, or else could not.

"Say, Pet, p'raps ye did for 'em that time?" suggested one of the others.

"Git out! Thar wa'nt no chance of that happenin'. Waddy just wants tuh fool us. He allers was that ways, yuh know," answered Pet; but it was plain that the awful suggestion rather awed him.

"Shall I shoot, Pet?" asked the other owner of a gun, dubiously.

"'Course yuh must. Think I'm goin' tuh do all the work. Blaze away both of ye, so long as ye got a sh.e.l.l left. Anyhow, p'raps we kin put in a claim fur part o' the reward, fur holdin' 'em here. Go on, Sim, I tell yuh!"

So Sim began to bombard the wall of the cabin. He made mighty sure not to fire in at that little gaping hole where the dead gra.s.s had hung until Pet knocked it through with his shot. If so be any damage was done to the inmates Sim did not mean to be accused as the guilty one.

Things seemed pretty lively for a time, with those two guns rattling away as fast as the owners could reload. From behind their trees the balance of the attacking crowd watched to see if there came any white flag of surrender. Beyond the boom of the guns, however, not a sound was heard, unless the excited voices of the eager boys were taken into consideration.

Bluff was plainly nervous. He tried to get up several times, and as often Frank pulled him down again.

"I just can't stand it, with all that racket going on. Why don't we have a share in it?" he begged, piteously.

"Because we don't want to expose our hand. Give those silly chumps time and they will play the game to suit us. Wait till their last sh.e.l.l has been fired; then we control the situation. See?" whispered his comrade, soothingly.

"Frank, you hit me again that time. What a goose I am. Why, of course that's the racket for us. Let 'em go on and roll their hoop!" answered Bluff, who at least was always ready to admit the error of his ways when convinced.

The shooting soon came to an end, for neither Sim nor Bill seemed to have any great amount of ammunition with them.

"That's my last sh.e.l.l!" declared the former, presently.

"An' I got my last in the gun. Shall I use 'em, Pet?" demanded the other.

"'Course, an' send it in the windy this time," growled the one addressed.

But Bill was too shrewd for that, and proceeded to sprinkle his bird shot over the surface of the ancient logs.

"Now we control the situation. Our guns are not useless, if theirs are!"

exclaimed Frank, with a chuckle.

Still he did not seem in any hurry to open hostilities. Perhaps he hoped these eight followers of Pet might find a way to capture the hoboes, upon which they could appear on the scene and menace the enemy until they were glad to run away, leaving the fruits of their victory in the hands of Frank and his friends.

"Pet's up to something tricky. I bet it's the old game of firing the shanty. You remember, Frank, how he tried to burn us out last Fall when we were in camp. There goes some of the lot creeping up with armfuls of leaves. Say, are we going to stand by and see it done?" queried Bluff, warmly.

"At the last minute we can stop it. When Pet starts up to strike a match, then we'll take a hand. No hurry. The chaps inside won't thank us, remember. It's out of the frying-pan into the fire with them," came from his companion, who was observing all that went on with a critical eye.

"Looks like they meant to have a big enough pile of leaves there," said Bluff, as the line of creeping forms kept depositing more and more fuel close to the wall of the cabin.

"Yes, and I reckon she'd burn like tinder if once started. Suppose those two hoboes rushed out suddenly, do you suppose Pet and his crowd have got sand enough to tackle them?" asked Frank of the recruit on his other side.

"They want that reward bad, I reckon, and would do some tall fightin' to get it. Fightin' is ther main suit, ye know," answered Tom Somers, as he caressed the cut on his face tenderly.

"Now they've stopped piling up the leaves. Looks like they expected Pet to go in and put a match to the bunch. He don't appear to hanker after the job, but to back out would put him on the blink with the crowd.

There, Frank, he's going to make the riffle, you see. Now, what?" panted Bluff, again seeking to rise, as he fumbled his gun nervously.

"There's no need of our doing anything, after all," remarked Frank.

"Then you mean to let 'em set the cabin on fire, and perhaps roast the poor hoboes before our very eyes?" exclaimed Bluff, in dismay.

"Not at all. I only mean that the job of frightening the bunch off is going to be taken out of our hands, for that wild man is coming back!"

"You don't say? Where--point him out to me, Frank. Oh! if I could only get a chance to snap him off; but, just like the luck, the last flashlight cartridge is gone. Ginger! I see him now. Ain't he a terror though? And won't they go into fits when he rushes 'em? There he comes, as sure as you live! Wow! watch the circus, boys. My! my! ain't I glad I'm here to see this!"

Tom Somers had said that his former teammates loved nothing better than a fight, but there were evidently times when such a condition of affairs was far from their thoughts. Such seemed to be the case now, for as they heard the shrill whoops of the outlandish hairy figure that came prancing headlong toward them, every boy took to his heels in a mad flight, heedless alike of direction or obstacles in the way, so long as he could escape a close encounter with that terrible creature.

CHAPTER XXII--HOLDING THE FORT

"Look at them run, Frank! Such a scared crowd of singed cats! Did you ever see such a sight? But where is that old wild man gone?" exclaimed Bluff, who had arisen fearlessly to his feet the better to watch the mad flight of Pet Peters and his cronies through the dense thickets.

"I couldn't say, Bluff. I was too much taken up with the way some of those boys banged headlong into the trunks of trees to notice anything else. Did you see, Tom?"

"He climbed the same old tree, and popped into that hole like a jack-in-the-box," declared the one addressed, quickly.

At that Frank laughed again and again, though Bluff looked at him as if hardly understanding what there was about the manner of the wild man's disappearance to amuse his chum so.

"Jerry!" he called presently.