Page:Cornelia Meigs-The Pirate of Jasper Peak.djvu/174

 Hugh reached the cabin and secured the rifle and the two packs that still lay upon the table.

“What luck I have had,” he thought exultantly. “Now I suppose I ought to put out the fire; it would not be fair to risk burning up their cabin,  no matter who they are.”

He had stepped back to the hearth when a low growl from Nicholas startled him to sudden attention. The big dog was standing with ears and head up and the hair on his back beginning  to bristle. Tiptoeing to the window, Hugh peered cautiously out. There, on the side of the clearing away from the stream, he saw three men  coming out of the edge of the wood. Even at that distance he could recognize the tall figure and swarthy face of Half-Breed Jake as he came  up the hill a little ahead of the other two. The door was on the opposite side of the cabin, so that  Hugh could slip out undiscovered, but it was a  long, long open slope that lay between him and  the sheltering woods.

Down the hill he plunged, cutting off corners of the trail, leaping over the rocks and scrambling