"Say,
aren't you fellows going to hurry up and free me?"
"Can't you free yourself?" suggested Reade.
"If I could have done that I'd now be ranging these woods in search
of the perpetrator of this outrage," Darry declared. "Hurry up
and untie me!"
"We will, but please be patient for a moment or two longer," begged
young Prescott. "This is such a cleverly artistic job that I
want to study out just how it was done. How did the fellow attack
you?"
"From behind," muttered Darry.
"But how?"
"Wait, and I'll tell you," Dave went on, forcing himself to talk
a trifle more calmly. "When I'm free I'll show you the spot over
there, in the thicket between the two clumps of bushes. Well,
I had gotten this far when I saw the missing steaks. They rested
on a tin pan on the ground in the thicket. It looked as though
the thief of our supper had gone away to get water or something.
I had just stepped, on tiptoe, of course, past this tree when
I heard a soft step behind me. Before I could turn, the noose
was dropped over my head, and then down on my neck. It was jerked
tight, like a flash, and I was pulled against this tree. The
fellow took some kind of hitch around the trunk of the tree to
hold me-----"
"Yes; I see the hitch," assented Dick.
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