“Not if I can get a gun I happen to know,” said Dorothy.  “You may both go out in the back yard if you choose.  I must try the rifle first—­oh, here is one just like father gave Joe his last birthday.  I had a mind to borrow it to come out here to Maine woods, but I never dreamed of getting game right in camp.”

“Don’t shoot dis niggah!” pleaded Tavia, actually making for the ladder.

Dorothy went over to the open window and put the rifle to her shoulder.  She pulled the trigger.  There was no discharge.  Not satisfied with one trial she worked the rifle until there was positively no possibility of any load being in the weapon.

“There, that’s clean,” she said.  “Now for the cartridge.”

Over on the wall hung Jack’s ammunition box.  Cologne was watching at a safe distance.  Tavia had gone downstairs by way of a rope that Jack Markin used for descending.  Dorothy put the load in, made sure it was all right, then went over to the beast’s hiding place.  She crouched down and took aim.

“Do—­be—­careful, Dorothy.”

Crack!

“There!  That fetched him!” exclaimed Dorothy.  “I saw him roll over.”

“Make sure he is dead before you pull the door away,” again cautioned Cologne.

“Dead as a carpet tack,” declared Dorothy.  “Let’s call Tavia and get her to pull him out.  She ought to do something in this, our first hunt.”

Tavia was called, and being assured that the thing had rolled the death roll, she came up the ladder, and with the aid of a long handled hay rake, she just ventured to touch the strange thing.

“It’s dead!”

This was the signal for a series of antics such as Tavia might imagine to be popular in the Figi Islands when some real dainty morsel fell into the camp kettle.

“Oh, let us see what it is!” ordered Cologne.  “Maybe we won’t have to go trout fishing, it may do for dinner.”

“It may, then again it may not,” replied Tavia.  “But May or Mamie, let’s haul her out.”

Dorothy put her shoulder to the frame door, back of which the thing was hidden.

“One, two, three!” she shoved it over.  “Are you ready?”

“Let her go!” called Cologne, springing up on an old trunk.

But it didn’t go, neither did it come.

The girls waited breathlessly.

“Pull him out, Tavia!  What’s the use standing there with a rake in your hand,” said Dorothy.

“I want to make sure he does not revive,” she replied, gingerly poking the rake handle a little further under the hidden corner.

“Oh, here,” exclaimed Dorothy impatiently.  “Let me take that implement and you hold this door.  We ought to get the animal out in time for lunch.”

They shifted positions.  Dorothy jabbed the rake recklessly into the corner.  Tavia moaned, and Cologne groaned.

Drag—­drag—­It was coming out.

“Mercy!” exclaimed Tavia.