“I hit the mark when I guessed Obed was smarter than he let on, and could talk just as well as the next fellow when he chose.  He’s just fallen into speaking that way through his association with these rough people up here, his own folks likely enough.  Or else he likes to pull the wool over our eyes, just for a joke.”

Aloud Max continued to reassure the other.

“Then consider it as good as settled, Obed,” he said, “that we’ll hang around here a short while.  If you think best you can get that Jerry to come over, and keep his finger on the pulse.  Perhaps it might be wise, too, because he’d know just what to do in case there was any trouble among the foxes left in the pens; and it is all new to us, remember.”

“Yuh’ve relieved my mind a heap, Max, sure yuh have,” Obed told him, again relapsing into the vernacular that is usually a part of a woods guide’s language.  “And tonight I’ll set the traps I’ve got fixed.  Mebbe if so be trespassers come a skulkin’ around they might git a little surprise.  But I’ll show yuh what I’m mentionin’ later on.  Jest now I on’y want to tell yuh I’m mighty glad I dropped into yer camp last evenin’ ‘stead o’ slippin’ away, like I fust thought o’ doin’.”

“But you don’t want me to look on this matter as a secret, do you, Obed?”

The other started, Max thought, and looked quickly at him.

“Now what might yuh be meanin’ by that, Max?” he presently asked, a bit anxiously.

“Oh!  I only wanted to have your permission to tell my three chums what you’ve been saying to me,” explained Max.  “Of course I know what their answer will be when I put it up to them.  We’ve really come here on what Bandy-legs calls a wild goose hunt, for there isn’t one chance in ten that we’ll ever be able to find Roland Chase; so our time is really pretty much our own, to do with as we will.  And Obed, all of us have taken such a big interest in your enterprise up here, that we’ll be only too happy to lend you a helping hand.  You are so near success now that it’d be a shame if you fell down through no fault of your own.”

“That’s what I keep tellin’ myself too, Max, don’t you know!” exclaimed the now excited Obed.  “I’ve hugged that hope close to my heart month after month, and now when I c’n almost whiff the success I’ve prayed for it’d nearly kill me to lose everything.  Oh!  I jest wants a couple of weeks at the most, and then I’ll show ’em, yes, I will.  They all said I’d make a dead failure out o’ my fur farm; but yuh c’n see it’s comin’ along right smart.”

When they reached the cabin the boys threw themselves down on the soft yielding turf near-by to “loaf” as Bandy-legs properly expressed it; and surely he could do this as well as any boy who ever drew breath.

Max took occasion to tell the others what he and Obed had been talking about.  All of them were deeply interested.  They looked angrily at each other when Max explained how the woods boy had found traces of some intruder who had actually entered his lone cabin while he, Obed, was away in their company; also telling how the other strongly suspected that a dastardly plot had been hatched, looking to the robbing of the pens connected with the silver fox fur farm.