"I had an idea that perhaps the sheriff and his posse might be aboard her," ventured Bluff, and he was instantly seized by his comrade.
"That's just what it meant. I hope Will's met them and told how the land lies here. If that is true it means the beginning of the end?" whispered Frank.
"And perhaps we may be back in our good old camp by night time, who knows?" answered the other, joyfully.
Still, neither of them had the slightest thought of relaxing their efforts with regard to investigating the interior of that cabin, and ascertaining whether their comrade was being detained there against his will, perhaps in bonds, that cut his flesh cruelly.
Tom had noted the fact that the others were holding a little powwow, and hence he did not push on so as to leave them. In fact, Tom was not at all particular about quitting the society of these stout-hearted fellows even for a minute, while in such a ghostly neighborhood. Tom believed in spirits, and the story Bluff had told about that skeleton was ever before him.
When they began to advance once more, he also started off.
They were now so close to the cabin that if any one had been talking aloud inside those old moss-grown walls the boys could not have failed to hear the sounds.
There had been a window, but it was closed with a bunch of dead grass, and, of course, none of the boys thought of trying to remove this obstacle in connection with their obtaining a view of the interior. The only other opening, no doubt, was the door, which was allowed to remain wide open all the time for air and light.
Dare one of them crawl around the corner of the cabin and try to look in at that entrance? The risk seemed almost too much. Still, Frank remembered that they had two guns among them, while, so far as they knew, the hoboes possessed none; at least they had shown nothing of the sort thus far.
He had been thinking this over, however, and concluded that it hardly stood to reason that such desperate characters as these two, one an escaped reform school inmate and the other a yeggman tramp, would be entirely without some means of defence. Perhaps one of them might have a revolver which he had up to now kept out of sight for some reason.
Tom was pulling at Frank's trousers entreatingly. Catching his attention, he made a gesture with his hand, as talking was now out of the question.