out for a liquor outing, maybe we
don't need to be much concerned about them if we keep shy of them."

"I don't think that's all there is to it," Bud replied, with a note of
warning in his voice. "I heard one of them say we were likely to make
trouble for them and we ought to be chased away and scared so badly we'd
never come around here again, and the others seemed to agree with him."

"That sounds like a mystery," said Hal.

"I don't believe Mr. Perry would talk mathematics to explain such
conversation," Bud declared.

"If he did, he'd probably make another pun about sines and cosines. But,
say, don't you think we'd better make further investigation?"

"I don't know what we could do unless we did some more eavesdropping,
and that might cause them to get ugly if they caught us in the act,"
Bud reasoned.

"Yes," Hal agreed; "I suppose we'd better wait as quietly as we can till
Mr. Perry and Cub get back; then we can decide better what to do."

"I don't see that there's anything for us to do but get away from here as
soon as possible," said Bud. "Mr. Perry won't want to get into trouble
with four men."

"He'll probably have a talk with them to find out what's on their minds,"
was Hal's conclusion.

"And then get out rather than have a fight," Bud added.

"Oh, I hope there won't be anything as bad as that."

"Why not, if we insist on staying? If these fellows are the rough
characters we suspect them of being, that's the very sort of thing
they'd resort to, provided, of course, that they thought they could get
the best of us."

"Here they come now!" suddenly gasped Hal, indicating, with his gaze, the
direction from which "they" were approaching.

Bud turned quickly and saw four men emerge from the thicket some fifteen
feet to the rear of the tent. They did not look like rowdies, for they
were fairly well dressed, but there was nothing reassuring in the
countenance of any of them. One was tall and angular, another was heavy
and of medium height, another was very broad-shouldered and deep-chested
and had long arms and short legs, a sort of powerful monstrosity, he
seemed, and the fourth was fairly well proportioned, but small. There was
not a reassuring cast of countenance among them.

"We'll just have to stand our ground and hear what they have to say," Hal
whispered: "Maybe they'll be reasonable if we don't provoke them. Be
careful and don't say anything sassy."

"I won't," was the other's reassurance.