Tom Fairfield's Hunting Trip: or, Lost in the Wilderness. Chapman Allen

of the cold. But pshaw! This is mild to what we have sometimes. Yes, this feller I drove over kept rubbin’ his ears all the while. One ear was terrible red, and it wasn’t all from the cold either. It had some sort of a scar on it, like it had been chawed by some wild critter. It sure was a funny ear!”

      Tom looked at his chums with startled gaze. This was disquieting news indeed.

      CHAPTER VII

      AT CAMP

      Seemingly by common consent on the part of Tom’s chums, it was left for him to further question Sam Wilson and learn more about the man the caretaker had driven over to the hunting camp. And Tom was not slow to follow up the matter. He had his own suspicions, but he wanted to verify them.

      “You say you drove someone over to our camp yesterday?” Tom asked.

      “Not yesterday, the day before,” was the answer. “And it wasn’t exactly to your camp, but near it. Your camp is a private one, you know – that is, it belongs to an association, and I understand you boys are to have full run of all three places.”

      “Yes, the gentlemen who make up the organization very kindly gave us that privilege,” assented Tom.

      “Then you’re the only ones allowed to use the camps,” went on Sam. “I’ll see to that, being the official keeper. I’m in charge the year around, and sometimes I am pretty hard put to keep people out that have no business in. So, naturally, I wouldn’t drive no stranger over to one of my camps – I call ’em mine,” he added with a smile, “but of course I’m only the keeper.”

      “We understand,” spoke Tom, and his tone was grave.

      “Well, then you understand I wouldn’t let anyone in at the camps unless they came introduced, same as you boys did.”

      “Well, where did you drive this man then – this man with – ” began George, but Jack silenced him with a look, nodding as much as to say that it was Tom’s privilege to do the questioning.

      “I drove this man over to Hounson’s place,” resumed the camp-keeper, as he saw that all the baggage was piled in the pung. “This man Hounson keeps what he calls a hunters’ camp, but shucks! It’s nothing more than a sort of hotel in the woods. Some hunters do put up there, but none of the better sort.

      “The gentlemen who own the three camps you’re going to tried to buy up Hounson’s place, as they didn’t like him and his crowd around here, but he wouldn’t sell. That’s where I took this Jersey man who complained of the cold. Kept rubbing his ears, and one of ’em was chawed, just as if some wild critter had him down and chawed him. ’Course I didn’t say anything about it, as I thought maybe it might be a tender subject with him. But I left him at Hounson’s.”

      “Did he say what his name was?” asked Tom, but he only asked to gain time to think over what he had heard, for he was sure he knew who the man with the “chawed” ear was.