Phil Bradleys Mountain Boys | Page 3

burden piled on his back.
"As what?" asked Ethan, giving Phil a nudge, and thus calling attention
to the fact that by degrees the puffing Lub had actually gone ahead,
fastening his eyes on the winding trail, and evidently feeling that he
was becoming quite a woodsman.
"Why, about that cabin the old guide Jerry Kane told us was on the
shore of the lake. It'll save us building one, you know, if it's in any kind
of a decent condition," the tall boy went on to say.
"Yes, that's a fact," Phil himself remarked; "I've been thinking so right
along. I only hope we won't find some fishermen camped in it. Kane
said that once in a long while some guide took a party over to Surprise;
but that the tramp was so hard few gentlemen cared to try for it. There
are lakes all around that offer just about as good fishing."
"I should think there'd be some pretty fine hunting around up here,"
remarked Ethan. "I've noticed quite a few signs of deer, and that was
certainly the track of a big moose we saw. I'd like to run across one of
that stripe. Never saw a wild moose in all my life."
"I wouldn't be surprised if some of us do meet one while we roam the
woods around the little lake," Phil told him. "If I'm that lucky I want to
take a picture of the beast, to add to my collection."
"And I reckon, now," suggested X-Ray, "that nearly every night you'll
be setting traps, not to catch wild animals, but to make them take their
own pictures. That's the main reason why you've come up here, isn't it,

Phil?"
"Well, you know it's a sort of hobby of mine, and I've got all the
apparatus for taking flashlight pictures along with me. I started in to the
business just to kill time; but let me tell you it grows on a fellow like
everything. I'm something of a hunter myself, but this shooting with a
camera beats anything else all hollow. Besides, you get your game, and
yet don't injure it, which is the best of all."
Ethan laughed, and shook his head.
"But your pelts don't bring you in the hard cash, Phil, like mine do," he
went on to say, with a touch of genuine pride in his voice. "S'pose now
I'd just snapped off that black fox's picture instead of getting his paw in
my steel Newhouse trap--it might have been all very well, but I'd be
several hundred dollars shy right now."
X-Ray Tyson chuckled; but the other frowned and shook his head. It
would never do to get Ethan's suspicions aroused. He was terribly
persistent, and once on the scent would never give up until he had
unearthed their clever little plot. Then good-by to peace among the
Mountain Boys, for Ethan would never be apt to forgive them the
deception.
"That's the main thing, after all, Ethan," Phil added. "One man's food is
another man's poison. You enjoy your way of doing things, and I
understand how that is, for I'm something of a hunter of small game
myself; but I find more real delight in surprising a keen-nosed fox, or a
night-roaming raccoon, and getting his photo than in blowing them
over with a charge of shot."
"Think there could be any bear up around here, Phil?" asked Lub, over
his shoulder.
"I wouldn't be surprised, and if we run across tracks I'll add to my
collection."
"Mebbe we ought to have fetched a gun along," suggested X-Ray, who

was not much of a hunter himself, though fond of any kind of game
when it was cooked at a camp-fire.
"Well, that would have brought us into trouble with the game wardens,"
Phil replied.
At this point they were interrupted by a cry from Lub, who was on his
hands and knees in the midst of the scrub, where he had evidently
caught his foot in a vine, and gone sprawling down on account of his
clumsiness.
High above the exclamation from the lips of their fat companion they
could hear a fierce growling sound, and about ten feet beyond Lub they
saw the crouching body of a very large and angry bobcat, with blazing
yellow eyes, and every hair on its back standing up on edge, as it got
ready to spring.
CHAPTER II
LUB, AND THE MOTHER BOBCAT
"Keep still, everybody!" said Phil, grasping the perilous situation
instantly.
"Gee whiz! look at its eyes staring, will you?" gasped X-Ray, appalled
by the ferocious aspect of the crouching beast, which was squatted on a
log just a few paces beyond poor kneeling and terrorized Lub.
"Phil, oh! Phil, tell me what I ought to do!" they heard