“How did you make out?” asked Pepper of the colonel when he returned.

“Pretty well,” replied the colonel; “I got a saddle of venison and a couple of prairie chickens.”

“Really?” asked Pepper, his eyes snapping.

“Well, we’ll call them that,” replied the colonel.

Under the colonel’s direction the chickens and the saddle of mutton were suspended over the fire and kept slowly turning until they were thoroughly roasted.

“Done to a turn,” as Gerald expressed it.

“Better put out a sentinel, hadn’t you?” suggested the colonel when they had all gathered about the fire to watch the cooking of the dinner.

“A sentinel!” exclaimed Rand.  “What for?”

“Well, we don’t want our dinner carried off before our eyes,” replied the colonel.  “Are you sure that your agile enemy isn’t watching us from somewhere and just waiting for it to be done to his taste before making a raid on us?”

“Monkey Rae!” cried Pepper, starting up.  “You haven’t seen anything of him, have you?”

“No,” replied the colonel; “but, still it’s well to be on the lookout for him.  He’s rather a tricky sort of a chap, I believe.”

“He certainly is,” admitted Rand, “but it’s mostly fun with him; but Sam Tompkins, he’s quite a different sort.”

“What is the matter with him?” asked the colonel.

“I don’t know,” drawled Rand, “except he was just born that way.  I think he is bad just from love of it.”

“Isn’t that rather a sweeping condemnation, Randolph?” asked the colonel.

“Oh, he’s the worst of the bunch,” put in Pepper decidedly.

“That’s all true,” added Jack.  “There hasn’t been any mischief perpetrated in town for the last four or five years that he hasn’t been at the bottom of it.”

“He puts the other boys up to do all kinds of things and keeps in the dark himself,” continued Pepper.

“He would have been put away long ago,” went on Jack, “if it wasn’t for his father’s political pull.”

“Where did you learn all these things, Jack?” asked the colonel.

“Oh, we find out a good many things in the newspaper business, you know.”

“So it seems,” admitted the colonel.  “What has Master Tompkins been doing lately?”

“That’s hard to tell,” replied Jack laughingly, “he does so many things.  I hear he is going to get up an opposition patrol.”

“Who would he get to join it?” asked Gerald, scornfully.

“Oh, he can find plenty to do that,” replied Jack.  “You know he always has plenty of money to spend.”

“There’s Monkey Rae and Looney Burns,” said Pepper, “they would be in it.”

“And Kid Murphy,” added Dick.

“I wonder—­” began Jack, and stopped, seemingly lost in thought.

“What is it now, Jack?” asked Rand, “trying to put two and two together?”

“I was,” replied Jack, “but it don’t seem to come out four.”