“I only hope we find it unoccupied, that’s all,” ventured Will.
“No danger of anybody breaking in,” Frank declared. “Up here in the Maine woods there’s a queer sort of law among the natives. They are honest as the day in that way. Nobody ever thinks of locking his door at night.”
“Small game seems to be plenty enough,” Bluff went on to say. “But where are all the deer they’ve been telling us about? I’d like to run across something worth taking a crack at with my pump-gun.”
“Then there’s your chance, Bluff!” suddenly remarked Will. “Why, it looks for all the world like a gray wolf to me!”
“It must be a wolf, because Mr. Darrel said they sometimes come down here from over the Canadian border!” exclaimed Jerry.
“I’ll wolf him with that buckshot charge I’ve got ready for a deer!” muttered Bluff fiercely, as he dropped his pack and started to bring his repeating shotgun up to his shoulder.
“Hold on!” cried Frank, pulling the weapon hastily down. “Look again, Bluff, and you’ll see that’s no wolf, but a dingy dog. Yes, and we’ve seen that dog before, too!”
“Here’s trouble ahead!” declared Jerry, in evident disgust; “because sure enough that’s certainly the ugly beast we saw on the train.”
Bluff was still staring. He seemed half-inclined to doubt his eyesight. Just then the dingy-looking animal gave a series of snappy barks; after which expression of defiance to the boys he turned and scampered away at a rapid pace.
“For three cents I’d knock him over,” muttered Bluff angrily.
“It would be silly for you to try it, Bluff,” Frank told him, “and only give the dog’s owner a good reason for taking the law in his own hands.”
“But, just think of it, that crowd must have got off at the next station, Frank!” declared Bluff.
“Well, they had a right to, if they felt like it, I suppose,” he was told. “Since when did the railroad company give us charge over the trains up here in Maine, that we could object to anybody leaving the cars? We did that when we felt like it.”
“Yes, but we’re going to have that bunch around here, and they’ll be our rivals in the hunting,” Bluff continued vigorously.
“If half they tell us is true,” laughed Frank, determined not to cross rivers before he came to them, “there’ll be plenty of game here for us all.”