“Where does it go now?” asked Jack after a while, when they had lost it and were unable to pick it up again.

“That’s doing very well for a beginning,” commended the colonel.  “They went off here, I think to avoid the house, and we are almost there.”

A short walk brought them to the shack, which was set in a little clearing in the woods.  It was one-story high and about sixteen feet square, with a small kitchen in the back.  It was provided with two doors, numerous windows, and had a small porch in front.  It was ceiled inside and scantily furnished with a few chairs, a couple of tables and a couch, but the walls were ornamented with the heads of deer and elk, as well as the skins of smaller animals, and the floor was covered with bear and panther skins.  Over the big fireplace hung a shotgun with a couple of rifles, and several Indian bows stood in one corner.

CHAPTER VIII

TALKING IT OVER

“I thought you didn’t use a stove,” remarked Jack, opening his eyes in astonishment at the sight of the colonel’s well-appointed kitchen.

“Why not?” asked the colonel, smiling at Jack’s surprise.  “I don’t sleep on the ground from choice, when I have a comfortable bed.”

“But, you said—­” continued Jack.

“This is a permanent headquarters,” the colonel went on.  “When I go on a march I don’t carry all these things with me.  What we don’t have we get along without, as part of the day’s task.”

“That’s a grand pair of horns on that elk’s head,” admired Rand, who was looking at the trophies of the chase that hung on the walls.  “Isn’t there a story that goes with that?”

“Not much of a story,” replied the colonel.  “It was killed on a trip I made up in the Canadian Northwest, and it was a narrow escape for me, too.  It was killed by an arrow from one of those bows there.”

“An arrow!” exclaimed Rand.  “I didn’t know that an elk could be killed with an arrow.”

“An arrow is as deadly as a bullet at short range,” replied the colonel.  “You have read of the English archers and their famous long-bows, haven’t you?”

“And Robin Hood,” put in Pepper.

“Robin Hood, of course,” continued the colonel.  “The Indians were dangerous foes, too, even when they had nothing but their bows and arrows.”

“I wonder if I could learn to shoot with one of them,” mused Rand, drawing back one of the bows, a feat that required all of his strength.  “Say, boys, I’ve got an idea.”

“Hold fast to it,” counseled Donald.  “You may no get another.”

“Let’s organize an Indian patrol, and we can carry bows and arrows.”

“It might be worth thinking about,” admitted Donald.

“That’s what we wanted to talk to you about, colonel,” said Jack, “but I am afraid it’s too late to take the matter up to-day.”

“Why too late?”