Storm-Bound: or, A Vacation Among the Snow Drifts

Elmer looked at him, and then smiled grimly.

"Oh! well, if that's what you've got troubling you, it's all right, Lil Artha," he went on to say, meaningly. "I kind of imagined you were thinking of something else. And if some one should take a notion to skip out, remember it's no business of yours. We wouldn't want to detain any one against his will."

"Sure, I didn't mean to try to," acknowledged the tall scout, "'less, f'r instance, he tried to loot the whole shebang, when I'd think it my duty to cover him, and then call Uncle Caleb."

"I don't think you'll find any need of doing that, Lil Artha," continued Elmer; "fact is, all the signs point just the other way."

"Hope so," grunted his chum; and this was all that passed between them.

Later on the cabin became quiet, except for the heavy breathing of those who were sound asleep. Elmer dozed. Somehow, although he was desperately sleepy, he did not appear to be able to lose himself for more than brief intervals at a stretch.

Perhaps it was his strange surroundings, although Elmer could hardly believe such to be the case, for past experiences were against it. He could remember sleeping soundly on more than a few occasions when danger threatened; he had helped guard the saddle band of horses on his uncle's ranch when rustlers in the shape of horse thieves were operating all through the vicinity; and on being given a chance to snatch an hour's sleep had lost himself as soon as his head touched the ground.

The wind moaned through the branches of the trees without. Now and then Elmer believed that he could hear faint sounds that might proceed from certain of the four-footed denizens of that great snow forest around them, possibly searching for food while the night lasted, since they hugged their dens in the daytime.

Once he saw Lil Artha thrust his head out from his bunk, and stare at the figure bundled up in those blankets on the floor. This told the scout master that Lil Artha had not been able to quite get over the suspicions he had formed, and which Elmer believed to be wholly unwarranted.

It must have been long after midnight when Elmer, chancing to once more awaken, on glancing out from his bunk saw that Zack Arnold was no longer lying there on his well side, and wrapped in sleep.

The revengeful guide was now sitting up. He seemed to be intently listening, as though to either discover whether all of the others were sound asleep, or else trying to catch some signal from without.

A dreadful thought flashed into Elmer's mind, though he quickly dismissed it as unreasonable. It was of course possible that Zack may have coaxed others to accompany him on his mission of revenge; but if he had company why should he appeal to his bitter enemy when in desperate need of succor? That alone stamped the idea as next door to absurd; and so Elmer put it out of his mind as impossible.

At the same time the actions of the guide were certainly queer, to say the very least of it. He was now getting slowly and painfully to his feet, repressing a groan while so doing; because with one arm tied up and useless it is not always the easiest thing in the world to get up off the floor, and out from a mess of clinging blankets.

Once he was on his feet the actions of the man became even more suspicious. He crept toward the door, turning his head several times as though to make sure that no one was watching him. Here he fumbled for a brief time, managing presently to take aside the bar. Then he gently opened the door, and as the wind was from the north, and the opening faced the south, the cold air did not enter when he had done this.

Elmer, still watching, half expected to see the guide step out and depart. He was even debating with himself as to whether his duty might not compel him to raise his voice in protest against such an act, since the chances were the man would not be able to survive the exposure in his present weakened condition, without his rifle, and with no food to sustain him.

He saw that Lil Artha had that long neck of his "rubbering," as he himself would have termed it; doubtless his gun was alongside him in the bunk, and even then he had hold of it.

To the astonishment of Elmer, however, the man did not pass beyond the doorsill. He seemed to have drawn some object from a hidden receptacle about his person, where it must have escaped observation when his benefactors were helping him. And giving this a swift toss Zack Arnold hurled it far out amidst the snow drifts; after which he backed into the cabin, softly closed the door, glanced hurriedly around to see if he had been observed, but seeing nothing, because Lil Artha had hastily drawn his head back as might a cautious old tortoise when threatened with peril; after which the guide replaced the bar.

Five minutes after all this queer happening had taken place Zack was once more bundled up in his blankets, and apparently bound to go to sleep, this time in real earnest.

After that Elmer seemed to find no difficulty whatever in getting asleep himself. Why, it really seemed as though a great load had been removed from his mind; and the first thing he knew George was calling him to get up, because breakfast was almost ready.

It was a most unusual thing for the scout master to over-sleep. Some of the others, notably Toby and George, joked him about it; but Elmer noticed that Lil Artha did not say a word.

Later on, after they had all partaken of the fine meal that George prepared, he doing his level best to show Uncle Caleb that there were other cooks as well, Elmer caught Lil Artha making certain gestures in his direction. He could manage to guess what it all meant, and believed the other wanted a chance to talk with him outside.

"I wonder what the weather promises for to-day; and I think I'll step out to see how things look," Elmer presently remarked carelessly.

"I'll go along and give you the benefit of my vast experience as a weather prophet!" exclaimed Lil Artha, jumping up; "the rest of you stay inside, because too many cooks spoil the broth, and two of us ought to be enough to settle this job with the clerk of the weather."

It happened that George was still busy with some of his dishes, about which he saw Uncle Caleb was unusually particular, in that he used two separate waters in washing the same; while Toby was busily employed in looking over some traps he had discovered hanging from a nail, and evidently seldom used; so that neither of them dreamed of leaving the comfortable cabin, and braving the outside air just then.

"What's all this about, Lil Artha?" demanded the scout master, after the door had been carefully closed behind them.

"Why, I happened to know that you saw that ugly looking guide moving around in the middle of the night, Elmer; and I thought you must have noticed that he threw something away when he was standing there in the doorway?"

"I did see him do that, and I knew you were on the job, too, Lil Artha," Elmer went on to say; "but if you've made a discovery, hurry up and tell me what it is, because I haven't thought to put my sweater on, and it's pretty chilly here."

"Well, I was that curious to know what it could be the fellow threw away," continued the tall scout, "the first thing this morning, before any of the rest of you had peeped an eye open, I got up, and came out here to look around."

"And did you find anything?" asked Elmer, his own curiosity aroused by now.

"I had to go back and forth a heap before I came on a little hole in a snow drift that looked like something had dropped in there," continued Lil Artha, in a highly mysterious fashion. "So I began to dig down, and pretty soon my hand touched this!"

He thereupon drew something from its place of concealment, and held it up before the eyes of his astonished companion.

"Why, it only looks like a piece of common gaspipe!" exclaimed Elmer.

"Just what it is," Lil Artha went on, in an awed tone; "but say, Elmer, the same is crowded chock full of some sort of stuff that may be dynamite for all I know. It's a sure-enough infernal machine, one of the crude bombs that you read about in the New York papers, such as Italians use when they want to make some rich merchant or banker hand over blackmail money. Look at it yourself, and then you'll know what fetched that skunk of a Zack Arnold up here to this region. He meant to blow Uncle Caleb's cabin to flinders, that's what he did; and p'raps with the owner inside of the same. Huh! no wonder he didn't want that thing to be discovered on his person! I sure don't blame him a little bit!"

And Elmer, as he examined the miserable contrivance which would explode with so great a power for harm, felt a thrill pass all over his body.

CHAPTER XV

A SCOUT'S EDUCATION

"What do you make of it, Elmer; is it a sure enough bomb?" demanded Lil Artha, whose face was working strangely under the violence of his emotions.

"Looks like it was that, and nothing else," admitted the scout master, slowly, with a wrinkle across his forehead, as though he might be considering weighty matters, as indeed he was just then, for one so young.

"And there can't be any doubt but what he meant to blow up the cabin of the man he forced himself to believe was his enemy, the kindest-hearted gentleman you and the rest of us ever met up with – tell me that, Elmer, didn't he?"

"Hold on, Lil Artha, don't explode!" cautioned Elmer, soothingly. "I understand how you feel about this ugly business. Yes, that must have been the scheme that brought Zack away up here in the dead of winter. Whether he meant to do Uncle Caleb bodily injury or not we've no means of knowing. Let's hope that the limit of his revenge was confined to the destruction of the cabin, and all the valued treasures it held."

"Well, that would be arson, and the law sits down mighty hard on anybody who deliberately, and 'with malice aforethought,' as I've heard my dad say, sets fire to the property of another. He deserves being kicked out, and we'll have to attend to his case, the whole bunch of us."

The excited scout made a quick movement, as though about to rush into the cabin, waving the piece of gas-pipe which had been fashioned into a rude but deadly bomb with a fuse to it; Elmer, however, tightened his grip on his chum's sleeve.

"Wait! Don't be in such a hurry, old fellow. Let's reason this thing out a little before you spill the fat in the fire!" he told Lil Artha, in that quieting voice of his that carried such weight with the other scouts.

"But, Elmer, don't you see he's a regular firebrand!" urged the tall boy, twisting a little, as though struggling to get loose from the detaining hand; but only in a faint-hearted fashion, because as always the influence of the scout master predominated. "How do we know but what right now he's figuring on doing us all some mean trick? We're friends of Uncle Caleb, and he must look on us as his enemies."

"You forget something, Lil Artha," urged Elmer.

"Oh! yes, in my hurry I'm always forgetting things; but tell me what I've let slip now, Elmer."

"It was yesterday that Zack was heading toward this cabin, breathing all sorts of ugly threats against Uncle Caleb, wasn't it?" Elmer continued, in that smooth argumentative tone he knew how to use so well, and which as a rule was so wonderfully convincing.

"Why, of course it was, Elmer," admitted the other, weakly, yet curiously.

"And something has happened since then, you know, Lil Artha?"

"Oh! sure, several things," replied the tall scout.