be trespassers come a skulkin' around they might git a little
surprise. But I'll show yuh what I'm mentionin' later on. Jest now I
on'y want to tell yuh I'm mighty glad I dropped into yer camp last
evenin' 'stead o' slippin' away, like I fust thought o' doin'."

"But you don't want me to look on this matter as a secret, do you,
Obed?"

The other started, Max thought, and looked quickly at him.

"Now what might yuh be meanin' by that, Max?" he presently asked, a bit
anxiously.

"Oh! I only wanted to have your permission to tell my three chums what
you've been saying to me," explained Max. "Of course I know what their
answer will be when I put it up to them. We've really come here on what
Bandy-legs calls a wild goose hunt, for there isn't one chance in ten
that we'll ever be able to find Roland Chase; so our time is really
pretty much our own, to do with as we will. And Obed, all of us have
taken such a big interest in your enterprise up here, that we'll be only
too happy to lend you a helping hand. You are so near success now that
it'd be a shame if you fell down through no fault of your own."

"That's what I keep tellin' myself too, Max, don't you know!" exclaimed
the now excited Obed. "I've hugged that hope close to my heart month
after month, and now when I c'n almost whiff the success I've prayed for
it'd nearly kill me to lose everything. Oh! I jest wants a couple of
weeks at the most, and then I'll show 'em, yes, I will. They all said
I'd make a dead failure out o' my fur farm; but yuh c'n see it's comin'
along right smart."

When they reached the cabin the boys threw themselves down on the soft
yielding turf near-by to "loaf" as Bandy-legs properly expressed it; and
surely he could do this as well as any boy who ever drew breath.

Max took occasion to tell the others what he and Obed had been talking
about. All of them were deeply interested. They looked angrily at each
other when Max explained how the woods boy had found traces of some
intruder who had actually entered his lone cabin while he, Obed, was
away in their company; also telling how the other strongly suspected
that a dastardly plot had been hatched, looking to the robbing of the
pens connected with the silver fox fur farm.

Obed was inside doing something at the time, and so Max felt that he
could talk freely. He meant that his three chums should know everything
in the beginning, before he called on them to decide whether they would
stay over