Part 6 (1/2)

”Did you, Frank; and how could you see to do it, with the night so dark outside?” Jerry demanded.

”Will heard the sound,” Frank explained, ”but it was no animal at all, only some person trying to get in.”

”Tell me that; will you!” burst out Bluff. ”Trying to rob us the very first night out! Lucky there's a bolt on the door, as well as a padlock outside; and that we thought to shoot it home. But, Frank, did you hit him; and do you think the poor critter is lying out there now, badly hurt?”

”Don't be foolish, Bluff!” exclaimed Frank, indignantly. ”You know me better than to think I'd aim at a human being, when there was no need of it. I just banged away up in the air to give him a scare. And I rather think it filled the bill all right.”

”Let's go out and see,” suggested the impetuous Bluff, starting for the door.

”Hold on a minute, till everybody is ready,” cautioned Frank; ”better get your shoes on, too, boys; because it's cold on deck at this time of night.”

Presently all p.r.o.nounced themselves as ready to stroll outside, and see what was awaiting them. From the varied a.s.sortment of dangerous weapons which the chums brandished, one might think they antic.i.p.ated finding the deck fairly swarming with river pirates; and that a serious mix-up was in store. Will carried the hatchet; Bluff his pump-gun, about which the others were always railing; Jerry had a rifle; while, as we know, Frank still kept his reliable double-barreled present handy.

”Shall I open the door now?” demanded the impatient and daring Bluff.

”Yes, and be careful how you use that gun of yours,” warned Frank, who knew the hasty ways of the other of old.

So Bluff flung the door wide open, and they poured forth. He carried a lighted lantern in addition to his gun; and Frank still had that useful little electric hand-torch in commission, so that there promised to be plenty of light provided, by means of which the whole deck, from stem to stern, could be illuminated.

Bluff experienced a sense of bitter disappointment, for nothing jumped at him as he had really hoped might be the case. Instead, all seemed peaceful and quiet out there under the summer stars. The river whined and gurgled as it continued to run against an obstruction in the way of the broad houseboat; little wavelets lapped the sh.o.r.e close by; but there was no other sound save the far-away wheeze of a towboat's exhaust, as it bucked the current of the swift-flowing river, with possibly a raft of loaded barges in charge.

”Why, there's not a thing here, Frank,” exclaimed Bluff, looking around him, and blinking like an owl at the light of his own lantern.

Frank had not expected to discover anybody still crouching there on the deck. He believed that sudden roar of his gun would be enough to send the trespa.s.ser flying, whoever he might be.

”I was pretty sure we wouldn't find him here,” he remarked, casting his eyes around at the same time.

”Say, it couldn't be that some animal gnawing, a rat maybe, fooled you bad, I suppose, Frank?” suggested the doubting Jerry.

”How about that, Will?” asked the one addressed, turning to his chum.

”Oh! I heard it as plain as anything,” Will hastened to declare, vehemently; ”and just as Frank said, it must have been somebody trying to open the door. First I thought of panthers and alligators and all those things; but now I just know it must have been a man, because he turned the k.n.o.b of the door, and even shook it a little as if he might be angry because it was fast.”

”Listen to the nerve of that!” exclaimed Bluff. ”Thinkin' we expected to keep open house on this trip. Tried the door, did he? Wanted to come in and join the Outdoor Chums! Perhaps if we'd left that door unfastened we'd have waked up in the morning to find a tramp sleeping on the floor of the cabin.”

”What is it, Frank?” asked the nervous Will, upon seeing the other start forward.

For answer Frank stooped down, and seemed to pick some object from the deck, just where the gunwale of the boat cast a little shadow.

”This doesn't belong to anybody here, I reckon?” he remarked, holding aloft the object he had found.

”A hat, and an old slouch one at that!” exclaimed Will.

”I pa.s.s!” remarked Bluff, immediately.

”Give me the go-by, Frank; never saw it before now!” called out Jerry, after he had taken one good look at the head covering, which differed in every way from such hats as the boys carried along with them.

”And,” Frank went on to say, ”as it certainly wasn't here when we went to bed, we can set it down as pretty sure the fellow who crept aboard the _Pot Luck_ while we were asleep dropped it, when he had to cut and run so lively after my shot.”

”That goes,” observed Jerry, with conviction in his voice; for he evidently was in agreement with all that Frank said.