“I told you so—­it’s gone!” shouted Bluff, at this juncture.

“What’s gone?” echoed Will.

“My gun!  Something seemed to tell me it was a silly thing for me to run off in that way and leave it.  And now they’ve stolen it!” wailed Bluff.

“What!  Do you really mean to say you can’t find it?” questioned Frank.

“Help me look, fellows.  Oh! my heart will be broken if it’s true.  I was just dreaming of what great things I meant to do with that splendid repeating shotgun.  Please search around the camp!” pleaded Bluff.

Of course they immediately started a thorough hunt for the strangely missing weapon, even the limping Jerry seeming as deeply interested in the search as any one of his comrades.

High and low they looked, turning over all the blankets in the tents, but not a sign of the wonderful “pump-gun” could they discover.

The other guns were just where they had been left, and so far as they could see not another thing had been stolen.

“I declare, this is mighty queer,” remarked Frank, when they were ready to give over the quest.

“Strangest thing I ever heard of,” declared Will.

“Talk about your airships, I think the blooming old thing must have taken wings and sailed away,” grunted Jerry, still rubbing his wounded shin sympathetically.

“But why should they pick out Bluff’s gun of the lot?” demanded Frank.

“That’s easy enough to answer.  They knew a good thing when they saw it, I bet that crowd noticed what a bully gun I carried, when we passed them on the road, and they’ve been hanging around ever since,” avowed Bluff, positively.

“Then the rocks—­” began Will

“Were fired at us only to tempt a rush.  It was all a plot, fellows, to coax us away for a short time.  And the worst of it is the game worked only too well.  I’ll never get over that loss, never!  I feel sick!” went on Bluff.

He kept shaking his head as if working himself up into a desperate frame of mind.  Evidently it would have gone hard with any one of Andy Lasher’s crowd if the offended boy could have laid hands on him just then.

“I wonder if Uncle Toby could give us any information on this subject?” suggested Frank.

“Oh! call him in and see.  Perhaps he even grabbed it up in his fright.  Shout to him, Frank, please,” exclaimed Bluff, eagerly.

“Hello!  Uncle Toby!  Show up here; the coast is clear, and all danger past!”

Placing his hands about his mouth, after the fashion of a megaphone, Frank shouted these words several times.

“There he comes!” cried Will, pointing to a moving object.

“Has he got anything in his hands?” gasped Bluff, anxiously.

“Not that I can see,” replied the other.

Bluff groaned and wrung his hands disconsolately.

“It’s gone, boys!  I’ll never set eyes on that beauty again.  Might as well give up and go back to town,” he said, gloomily, as if brokenhearted.