“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 shore 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 trespasser 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 knob 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.”