had a hat on with feathers such as Jessie wears and the other wore a coat and veil like Laura’s. I guess a good many who saw them riding in the auto and cutting up like wild Indians thought they were Laura and Jessie.” And Dave heaved a deep sigh.
“And what are you going to do, Dave?” asked Phil, after a short silence, during which the three chums continued to skate in advance of their friends.
“What can I do? We are trying to locate the rascals, and when we do we’ll make them stop. But in the meantime – ”
“They may cause you no end of trouble,” finished the senator’s son.
“I don’t care so much for myself as I do for Laura and Jessie, and for Mr. and Mrs. Wadsworth. I hate to see them suffer because of my trouble with those rascals. I don’t see why Merwell and Jasniff can’t fight it out with me alone.”
“You forget one thing, Dave,” returned Phil. “Merwell was once sweet on your sister. I suppose it made him furious to be turned down by her.”
“Well, then, why does he annoy Jessie? She never harmed him, or Jasniff either.”
“Huh! As if you didn’t know why!” replied Roger, with something like a chuckle. “Don’t they both know that Jessie is the very apple of your eye, and that anything that brings trouble to her will cut you to the heart? Of course they know that, Dave, and you can rest assured that they will try to hurt you quite as much through Jessie as they’ll try to hurt you direct.”
“Perhaps, Roger. If I was sure – ”
“Low bridge!” shouted Phil at that instant, as a bend of the river was gained, and then the whole crowd of students swept under the lowhanging branches of a number of trees. Those ahead had to go slowly and pick the way with care.
“How much farther have we to go?” called out Sam Day.
“Only a couple of miles,” replied Dave. He turned to Phil and Roger. “That’s about all,” he whispered. “Keep it to yourselves.”
“We will,” they replied.
“Somebody else going to carry this hamper?” cried Chip Macklin. “It’s getting rather heavy.”
“I’ll carry one end,” said Ben Basswood.
“And I’ll take the other,” added Phil. “Dave, you and Roger go ahead and bring down a couple of deer, and a bear, and one or two tigers, or something like that,” he continued, with a grin, for he wanted to get Dave’s mind off of his troubles.
“Nothing but an elephant for mine,” answered Dave, with a forced laugh. “I don’t want to waste my powder.”
“As the society belle said when she left the mark of her cheek on the gent’s shoulder,” remarked Buster Beggs, the fat lad of the group.
“Say, that puts me in mind of another story,” came from Shadow. “Once on a time a Dutchman heard that a certain lady was a society belle. He wanted to tell his friend about it, but he couldn’t think of the right word. ‘Ach, she is von great lady,’ he said. ‘She is a society ding-dong!’”
“Wow!”
“There’s a ringer for Shadow!”
“Shadow, you want to frame that joke and hang it in the woodshed.”
“Put it down in moth-balls until next summer, Shadow.”
“Oh, say, speaking about moth-balls puts me in mind of another story. A man – ”
“Was it a young man, Shadow?” asked Dave, calmly.
“Maybe it was a very old man,” suggested Phil.
“Was he clean-shaven or did he have a beard?” queried Roger.
“Never mind if he was young or old, or clean-shaven or not,” cried the story-teller. “This man – ”
“Was he an American or a foreigner?” demanded Gus Plum. “That is something we have simply got to know.”
“And if he was knock-kneed,” put in Sam. “I hate love stories about knock-kneed men. They aren’t a bit romantic.”
“Who said anything about a love story about a knock-kneed man?” burst out Shadow. “I said – ”
But what Shadow was going to say was drowned out in the sudden report of a shotgun, – a report so close at hand that it made nearly every student present stop in alarm.
CHAPTER IV – THE SCHOOLBOY HUNTERS
“Dave, what did you shoot at?”
It was Phil who asked the question, for he had been the only one to see Dave raise his shotgun, take quick aim, and fire into the brushwood lining the river at that point.
“I shot at a rabbit, and I think I hit him,” was the reply. “I’ll soon know.” And Dave skated toward the shore, less than twenty yards away. He poked into the bushes with the barrel of his gun and soon brought forth a fat, white rabbit which he held up with satisfaction.
“Hurrah!” cried the senator’s son. “First prize goes to Dave! He’s a fine one, too,” he added, as the students gathered around to inspect the game.
“Thought you said you wouldn’t shoot anything less than an elephant,” grunted Buster.
“The elephant will come later,” answered Dave, with a smile.
“I’d like to get a couple like that,” said Gus Plum, wistfully.
“Maybe that will be the total for the day,” was Sam’s comment. He had gone wild-turkey shooting once and gotten a shot at the start and then nothing more, so he was inclined to be skeptical.
“Oh, we’ll get more, if we are careful and keep our eyes open,” declared Dave. “I saw the track of the rabbit in the snow yonder and that made me look for him.”
Dave’s success put all the students on the alert, and they spread out on either side of the stream, eager to sight more game.
Less than two minutes later came the crack of Gus Plum’s shotgun, followed almost immediately by a shot from Buster Beggs’ pistol. Then a gray rabbit went scampering across the river in front of the boys and several fired simultaneously.
“I got him! I got him!” shouted Gus, and ran to the shore, to bring out a medium-sized rabbit.
“And we’ve got another!” cried Sam. “But I don’t know whether Shadow, Ben, or I killed him.”
“I guess we all had a hand in it,” said Ben. “We all fired at about the same time.”
“What did you get, Buster?” questioned Chip Macklin.
“I – I guess I didn’t get anything,” faltered the fat youth. “I thought I saw a squirrel, but I see now that it is only a tree root sticking out of the snow.”
“Great Scott, Buster! Don’t shoot down the trees!” cried Phil, in mock dismay. “They might fall on us, you know!” And a laugh arose at the would-be hunter’s expense.
