Page:Rover Boys on the Plains.djvu/177

Rh "I am going after him," said Tom. "You stay here until I get back."

"I am going along," said Songbird, and so it was arranged.

A few minutes of walking brought them to the stream of water, and they walked along the bank of this a distance of quarter of a mile, when Tom called a halt.

"There is the boy now—sitting on a rock, fishing," he whispered. "Don't scare him off."

They crept into the shelter of the trees and came out again directly behind the boy, who had just landed a good-sized fish and was baiting up again. He was a small boy, with an old-looking face covered with a fuzz of reddish hair. He had yellowish eyes that had a vacant stare in them.

"Hullo!" cried Tom.

The boy jumped as if a bomb had gone off close to his ear. His fishing pole dropped into the stream and floated off.

"Out for a day's sport?" asked Tom pleasantly. The boy stared at him and muttered something neither Tom nor Songbird could understand.

"What did you say?" asked the fun-loving Rover.

"Poor fishing pole!" murmured the boy. "Now Peter can't fish any more!"