“Oh!” shouted Dolph, with such an odd inflection of alarm in his voice that the others were naturally startled.
“What’s the matter now?” cried Teddy, whirling around toward the other.
“There’s another cat crawling along on the ground—by ginger! two of ’em! Why, the woods must be full of them! We’re going to be swamped with lynxes, boys; and this gun just _won’t_ behave half-way decent,” and Dolph ended with a groan as he kept working away excitedly at the mechanism of his repeating weapon.
“Where? I see one!” cried Teddy, as he swung his gun around swiftly.
“That’s the end of _him_; now show me the other cat, will you, Dolph? Bring ’em on as fast as you like; as long as my little Marlin’s got a single shell left, I’m good for any amount of game. Where’s the next victim?”
“Over yonder, crouching at the foot of that tree; don’t you see its eyes now, Teddy?” whooped the boy from Cincinnati.
“Shure I do; and that means I’m due for another victim. Watch me rool his hoop for him, will you, fellows?”
“Bang!” went the repeating shotgun again.
“You did it that time too, Teddy! Oh! if only this old gun hadn’t got stuck just when I needed it most, I might have made a clean sweep of the lot!” cried Dolph. “I’ve got a good notion to smash the old thing against a tree, and do without the rest of the trip, that’s what!”
“Don’t think of it,” called out the lumberman’s son, steadily. “Perhaps after all you’re more to blame than the gun, Dolph. I’ve been that excited myself when in a bad hole, that I hardly knew how I was clawing at the right part of my gun to work a new shell in. Do you see any sign of my cats coming out of their trance again?”
“No, they seem as dead as doornails; that gun is a hard hitter, Teddy,” remarked Amos Simmons, as he handled his own rather old fashioned single shot weapon with something approaching a sigh, as of envy, though he never voiced such a feeling.
“Any more around that you can see?” Teddy went on to call out, hilariously. “If there are, let ’em step right up to the pursers’ office, and settle. But I rather think the pair I potted look sort of small for the lynx tribe. I guess they must be half-grown cubs, after all; and you got the mother, Dolph.”
“Just what they are,” announced Amos, who had strode forward, and was bending over the last victim of Teddy’s snap shots. “But pretty tough lookin’ customers at that, I tell you, boys. I kinder guess they’d put up a rushin’ fight, if cornered. But you wound ’em up one, two, three, Teddy, with that gun of yours.”