When finally they had eaten until no one could contain another bite, the boys, as was their habit, drew around the crackling fire, and started discussing their affairs, as well as other matters that came up.
Frank had warned Bluff that it might be just as well if they kept still about the series of shots they had heard, accompanied by faint shouts that might have stood for either triumph or excitement.
To his chagrin Jerry himself introduced the topic.
“While you were gone, fellows,” he went on to remark, “Will and I were prowling around near here to find a good place to set his flashlight trap camera to-night, when we heard a regular row some distance over there. Must have been as many as five or six shots in rapid succession, and some hollering, too.”
As the cat was now out of the bag, Frank felt there was no need of keeping secret the fact that they, too, had heard the series of shots.
“Yes, we caught it just after we’d got our partridges, and before we raised the buck,” he confessed; “I didn’t mean to say anything about it, because there seemed no need; but since you’re wise to the fact we can talk about it.”
“It must have been that Nackerson crowd, don’t you think?” asked Will.
“There can be no question about that,” Frank replied.
“They started a deer, and were peppering away at him in great shape, of course?” suggested Jerry.
“That sounds like the explanation,” he was told; “but then the same shooting would have followed the discovery of a lynx, or perhaps a black bear in a tree. All we can be sure about is that we want to fight shy of that country over there. We can hunt a different field; and I’m in hopes that by doing so we’ll miss running across those men all the time we’re up here.”
“Now, Frank, you remember you told us to remind you of something?” Jerry remarked when the conversation flagged.
“You mean about this wonderful woods country up in the State of Maine,” Frank went on, smiling as though the task he had been called on to shoulder pleased him, since he was a native of the State, and loved it dearly.
“Yes; something about the strange ways you said there were for men to make a living in the woods,” Bluff added.
“I’ve already spoken about the professional honey hunter,” began Frank, “who puts in a lot of his time summers roaming the woods in certain sections, always on the lookout for bees working in the blossoms or flowers.”