A moment later Hal was beside his friend.
"Are you hurt much?" he demanded anxiously.
"Not even touched," was the reply. "I dropped to the ground when the bullet whizzed by. I was afraid he would hit me next time."
Hal seized Chester's hand and squeezed it warmly.
"I was afraid it was all up with you," he said. "I----"
The sudden flash of a rifle interrupted him, and another bullet flew past.
"Great Scott!" Hal ejaculated. "We've got to get out of here some way. We can't stand here and be shot down."
"Wait," said Chester, as Hal started to move away, and pulled the latter to the ground, where he had dropped himself.
"Let me look at that gun you have a moment."
Without a word Hal passed it over. Chester examined it as carefully as possible in the dark.
"I don't believe there is more than one man in these woods," he finally said. "Now, you stay here, and I shall try and work round behind him."
Without waiting for a reply Chester started crawling away, not directly toward the spot where the last flash of fire had come from, but bearing off well toward the right.
Hal started to protest, but, before he could utter half a dozen words, Chester had disappeared in the darkness. Hal lay in silence for some time. Finally, putting his cap upon a stick, he poked it cautiously out from behind the tree, where it was silhouetted against the opening between the trees.
A shot followed, and the cap leaped into the air.
"Good thing it wasn't my head," said Hal ruefully. "But if I can keep that fellow's attention centered on me, Chester may be able to nab him."
Once more he raised his cap on a stick and moved it about. Again there was a sound of a shot. But, even as the bullet sped by, there was a second report, and Hal heard his friend's voice raised in almost a shout:
Quickly Hal sprang to his feet and dashed in the direction of his friend's voice.
When Chester had left Hal he crawled slowly, and, making a wide detour, came upon his unseen enemy from behind. The second time the man had fired at Hal's hat, Chester was almost upon him.
Thinking that the man was shooting at his friend, being unconscious of the ruse Hal was employing, Chester immediately turned his own weapon loose upon the man, whom he could now plainly see. But, after firing, the enemy had shifted his position slightly at the very moment that Chester fired. Therefore, he escaped what otherwise would assuredly have been a death wound--for Chester was a crack shot--and received the ball in his pistol hand.
