Jack Ranger's Gun Club: or, From Schoolroom to Camp and Trail

“I don’t know,” spoke Jack with a worried look. “It has me puzzled, fellows. I don’t know what to think.”

“Let’s go back to camp, tell Long Gun about it, and bring him here to-morrow to see it,” suggested Sam.

“Long Gun would never come,” said Jack. “He’s too much afraid of bad spirits. No, boys, we’ll have to solve this ourselves, if it’s to be solved at all.”

The boys walked around the little level place, whereon there was the mute evidence of some terrific struggle.

“The queer part of it is,” said Sam, “that the footsteps of the men don’t seem to go anywhere, nor come from anywhere. Look, they begin here, and they end over there, as if they had dropped down from the clouds and had gone up again on the back of the big bird.”

Jack looked more thoughtful. As Sam had said, there were no marks of the men coming or going, and they could not have reached the level place, nor departed from it, without leaving some marks in the tell-tale snow.

“I give it up!” exclaimed Jack. “Let’s get back to camp. It’s getting late.”

They started, talking of nothing on the way but the mystery, and becoming more and more tangled the more they discussed it.

It was getting dusk when they came in sight of the camp fire, and they saw Budge and the Indian busy at something to one side of the blaze.

“I wonder what they’re up to now?” said Jack.

“Oh, probably Budge is teaching Long Gun how to chew gum,” was Nat’s opinion.

A moment later something happened. Budge seemed to shoot through the air, as if blown up in an explosion. He shot over the top of a small tree, and coming down on the other side, hung suspended by one foot.

“Help me down! Help me down!” he cried.

“What’s the matter?” called Jack, spurring his horse forward.

“I’m caught!” answered Budge.

“It certainly does look so,” spoke Nat, and he could not refrain from laughing at the odd spectacle Budge presented as he hung by one leg in a rope that was fast to the top of a tree, which bent like a bow with his weight.

“Take me down!” wailed the unfortunate one.

“How did it happen?” asked Sam.

“Long Gun made a spring trap,” gasped Budge, “and – and – ”

“And you wanted to try it,” finished Jack, as he went to his chum’s aid.

CHAPTER XXVII

ORDERED BACK

“Hurry up and get me down!” pleaded Budge, as he tried to grasp the sapling with his hands, to ease the strain on his foot.

“I’m coming,” replied Jack, who was laughing heartily. “Guess I’ll have to cut the tree down, though.”

“No; I have a better plan than that,” spoke Will. “I’ll show you.”

In another moment he was climbing up the thin trunk of the hickory that served to hold Budge Rankin suspended. Then Will’s plan was apparent. As he climbed up farther, his weight, added to that of Budge, caused the sapling to sway toward the ground.

“Grab me and cut the rope!” cried Budge.

“All right,” replied Jack, and when his queer chum was near enough to him, Jack seized him around the waist. Nat, with his hunting knife, severed the thongs of deer sinew from which Long Gun had made the loop. Then Budge was released, and he assumed an upright position on the ground, while Will dropped from the bending tree, which straightway sprang back to its place.

“Hu!” grunted Long Gun, with just the suspicion of a smile on his copper-colored face. “Boy go up heap fast.”

“’Sright,” admitted Budge, while he began hunting through his pockets for a piece of gum.

“What in the world did you ever put your foot in that trap for?” asked Jack, when it was ascertained that Budge had not been injured.

“Well,” he said, “I’ll tell you. You see, I asked Long Gun to show me how to make a spring trap. I thought it might come in handy when I got back home. He showed me, and made one. But it didn’t look to me as if it would work. So I just touched the trigger with my foot, and – and – ”

“We saw the rest,” finished Bony. “Cracky! But I thought at first you were giving us an exhibition of a human skyrocket.”

“Or trying to imitate the gigantic bird that left the marks in the snow,” added Sam. “Let’s tell Budge about it.”

Which they did; and as his chum was usually pretty sharp in his conclusions, Jack asked him what he thought it was that had made the mysterious prints in the snow.

“It must have been a roc, one of those birds you read about in the ‘Arabian Nights,’” declared Budge.

“There never were such birds,” objected Jack.

“Sure there were,” declared Budge. “It says so in the book.”

“No one ever saw one,” objected Sam.

“No, and you never saw George Washington,” spoke Budge quickly. “But you’re sure he was here once, ain’t you?”

“This is different,” remarked Bony.

“’Sallright. You’ll find that’s a big bird, like a roc,” declared Budge, while he began to help the Indian get supper.

They discussed, until quite late that night, the cause of the mysterious noises they had heard, and also what peculiar bird or beast had had the struggle with the men. Then Jack finally declared:

“Oh, what’s the use of wasting our breath over it? We can’t decide what it was. There’s only one thing to do.”

“What’s that?” asked Sam.

“Try and find out what it was.”

“How can we?”

“Well, I’ve got two plans. One is to make another trip on the other side of the mountain, and go farther next time. We can search for some sort of a camp.”

“And the other plan?” asked Will.

“Is to keep watch, and see if we hear that thing passing over our camp again. If we do, we’ll throw a lot of light wood on the fire, and when it blazes up we may catch sight of it.”