Some twenty minutes elapsed when the boy sat up, thinking he had heard a sound from the other tent.  This became a certainty just a few minutes later when a great uproar arose in the tent of the Rangers.  Loud voices were heard, threats and shouts.  The hundred and fifty-eight varieties of bugs that the fat boy had brought in in his ’possum bag, were getting in their deadly work on the persons of the Rangers.  Chunky had turned the tables on his tormentors most beautifully.

CHAPTER XII

INSECTS WIN THE BATTLE

The Rangers, slapping, scratching and fighting against the armies of insects that were crawling over them, had finally got out of bed and gone out of doors to sleep.  But there was no rest there either.  Their bodies were covered with ants and fleas, all with well-developed biters—–­and they bit!

At first the Rangers did not realize the trick that had been played upon them.  One who went back to the tent for his hat discovered the burlap sack that had been used in the ’possum hunt.  He brought it out, holding it up before his companions.  The Rangers eyed the bag, then gazed at each other solemnly.

“Stung!” groaned Dippy.

“Bitten, you mean,” answered Cad Morgan.

“Which one played that low-down trick on us?” demanded Pete Quash angrily.

“I reckon it was Fatty,” said Polly.  “He’s the one that would have thought of a thing like that.  I reckon there must have been a million of those bugs crawling over me.”

“I’ll tell you what, fellows.  Let’s get Fatty out and tie the sack over his head.  We’ll give him a dose of his own medicine,” proposed Dippy.  “We can’t stand for anything of this sort.”

“Look here, boys,” spoke up Cad.  “Are you welchers?  Can’t you take your medicine without squealing?”

“What do you meant” demanded Polly.

“I mean that we fellows put up a job on the kids.  The fat baby turned the joke on us, and right smart at that.  We’re It.  We’re full of bugs—–­the worst biters anywhere between the Rio Grande and the northern border.  Are we going to squeal?  I reckon we aren’t.  We’re going to stand here and let the biters do their worst.  I’m mighty near eaten alive, but I’m taking my medicine and I reckon I’ll be taking a lot more of the same dose before morning.”

“Wal,” drawled Polly, “I reckon you’re right at that, Cad.  But I’d like to wring that little cayuse’s neck just for luck.”

The “little cayuse” referred to was sleeping sweetly in his tent, untroubled by the distress of the Rangers.

All that night the Rangers walked up and down, slapping their thighs, scratching their legs, for the older the night grew the harder did those fleas seem to take hold.

“I reckon their bills will be so dull by morning, after drilling our tough hides all night, that we won’t feel them at all,” observed Polly.