When, however, he looked anxiously up into the tree where he had last seen Jerry, to his delight he found that the other had vanished completely from sight.
"Where's he gone?" asked Bluff, at this moment, he having apparently likewise just discovered the absence of the other chum.
"I don't know. Perhaps he's only hiding behind the trunk of the tree, or he may have found it hollow, like that other one, and slipped in. Watch what those fellows are up to. If they make a move to shoot at Jerry, we'll have to put in our oar," Frank answered with considerable feeling.
Pet Peters' crowd was plainly at a loss to know how they ought to proceed. They saw that hundred dollars reward dangling temptingly before their eyes, and could not bear the thought of letting it pass without straining themselves to the utmost to win it. All sorts of things they had wanted so long could be bought with that easy money, and they were not yet ready to give up their chances.
"Hi! Bill, you an' Sim git over here. I wanter have a spiel with yuh. Them guns orter fetch our game out on ther knees, if yuh on'y use 'em steady. Kim over, an' you, too, Miser Lee. P'raps I kin use yuh!"
It was Pet bawling out, and that his word carried weight was manifest by the way in which the three fellows addressed hastened to cross over to where he stood back of the big tree that had the gaping hole in its trunk ten feet from the ground.
Frank could see them talking earnestly, and gesticulating as if to emphasize their words. Finally Pet seized the gun that one of the others carried, and taking a quick aim at the cabin he pulled the trigger.
The dead grass vanished from the little window under the charges of shot at such close quarters.
"Kim out o' that, an' surrender to the law!" bellowed Pet.
Frank laughed to himself at the words; it was more than comical to hear this boy, whose contempt for law and order had made him a marked character in Centerville, so loudly proclaim his sudden conversion.
Silence followed this peremptory command. Those within the cabin either did not care to answer, or else could not.
"Say, Pet, p'raps ye did for 'em that time?" suggested one of the others.
"Git out! Thar wa'nt no chance of that happenin'. Waddy just wants tuh fool us. He allers was that ways, yuh know," answered Pet; but it was plain that the awful suggestion rather awed him.