Frank Allen at Old Moose Lake;

“And I’ll be happy!” came the loudly sung final line of a popular song, the words of which had been changed to inform the hearer that a camping party was most in the mind of the singer.

Lanky Wallace, the slim, athletic, quick-thinking pal of Frank Allen, was sauntering along the street towards Frank’s home, a rifle carried jauntily on his right shoulder, the singing being done by that young man for the sole purpose of attracting the attention of his friend.

Frank’s head popped out of an upper front window of the house.

“Don’t! Don’t! You’ll get arrested for disturbing the peace!” he cried, as Lanky looked up at him.

“What’s that? Get arrested for singing?” and Lanky struck a hurt attitude.

“Oh, that’s different! I didn’t know that was what you were doing. I thought you were calling hogs or selling peanuts!” called Frank, while Lanky swung the gun quickly from his shoulder as if he might bring it up to kill such an insulting speaker.

“Be down in a minute!” called Frank again, as he slammed the window to the bottom and disappeared into his room.

In a few minutes the two boys were together on the street, each with his rifle, headed for the homes of other boys.

Paul Bird, Ralph West and Buster Billings were sought and found, and when each had his rifle on his shoulder, the five young fellows started back toward the main road north.

“We ought to have some good target practice this morning,” said Frank, while the boys, all bunched together, made along the road. “Camping up at Old Moose Lake is going to call for some regular shooting, and too much practice isn’t enough.”

“Guess we’re the lucky boys,” remarked Lanky, after they had gotten to the edge of town and were approaching the woods in the rolling land beyond Columbia.

One of the boys asked him the “why” for the remark.

“Well, if Frank hadn’t been out West just when he was and if he hadn’t been where he was when we found dad’s treasure in the hills, and if dad hadn’t given Frank the Rocket, the best little old motor boat ever born, and if we hadn’t been coming down the Harrapin River just at the time we heard the cries of Mrs. Parsons and——”

“Say, listen!” Paul Bird interrupted the long-drawn out sentence of Lanky Wallace. “Are you making a speech or something?”

“—and,” continued Lanky, paying no heed to the interruption, “if we hadn’t seen that auto leave there, if we hadn’t luckily stumbled on to the rowboat taking the stolen stuff to Jed Marmette’s, if we hadn’t followed up the lead and seen old Jed stealing some of the stuff and if we hadn’t broken down that night, run out of gas, when we raced to Coville, all might have been different about this camping party.”

Lanky was quite right in this. The boys had planned a camping party at this autumn season, and Mrs. Parsons, the wealthy widow just above the city of Columbia who had been robbed of her jewels and silver, was so grateful to Frank and his friends for what they had done that she had offered them the use of the late Mr. Parsons’ camp at Old Moose Lake for their camping expedition when she learned they had made plans for one.

In the preceding volume, called “Frank Aden and His Motor Boat,” is told the story of the manner in which Frank and his boy friends had come into the activities of the robbery in time to catch the thieves redhanded and also to find for Mrs. Parsons her jewels and the silverware, most of which had come to her from her ancestors and those of her husband, who had died only two years before.

It so happened that Mrs. Parsons had accepted some questionable rumors for fact and had accused the boys of knowing more than they did. Her chagrin after the disclosure and her gratitude over the good work done by Frank Allen, Lanky Wallace, Paul Bird and Ralph West, caused her to reward them first with a very, very delightful picnic at her country home, a palatial spot facing the Harrapin River. It was following this picnic that, hearing the boys had been planning a camping expedition for the autumn season, she graciously tendered to Frank and his friends the use of a beautiful camp which had been the pride of Mr. Parsons in his lifetime, an offer the boys had cheerfully accepted.

“It was mighty good of Mrs. Parsons to offer us the camp up at Old Moose Lake,” said Frank, in reply to Lanky’s humorous recital. “She says it is stocked with food and she said she was going to order some more sent there, so we’ll have plenty of chance to keep alive, if eating is the only thing we have to do to keep alive.”

“No,” said Lanky, very sagely shaking his head in the negative, “we can’t keep alive unless we bring down fourteen deer, a couple of hundred pickerel, and——”

“And kill yourself getting it all home,” laughed Paul Bird.

By this time the chums had come to the grove where they proposed to hold their target practice, and Frank, with his usual sense of safety, led the way from the road almost a quarter of a mile, coming at last to a ravine which broadened out at one point to a great bowl, its sides of rock and sand.

“We can set up the target over that bed of sand,” and Frank pointed to one stratum of fine sand which broke out in the side of the ravine. “That will allow the bullets to imbed in something soft and we won’t take any chances on their glancing off.”

“That’s provided any one hits the target—except me, of course, I know my shots will all hit it all right——”

Once again Lanky Wallace was telling the other boys what he was going to do, joking with them.

“Listen to Mr. Lanky Wallace, who hates himself!” cried Ralph West. “How close do you expect to stand to hit that sand bed?”

“Come on, fellows,” broke in Frank. “Get that old piece of board and lean it against the sand bed, then pin the targets on. I’m anxious to shoot with my rifle——”

“That’s more than Lanky’s shooting with!” laughed Buster Billings. At this Lanky reached for Buster, but not quickly enough. That live lad was expecting the necessity for moving out of the way, and was successful.

The boys soon had the target placed properly, and then tossed up for the firing order, with Frank getting third shot, Paul and Lanky coming first and second, respectively.

Crack! Paul’s first shot broke the stillness, for the other boys paid the courtesy of keeping quiet while the contestant was sighting.

“Hit the atmosphere!” cried Lanky. “Watch me move that sand bed for you!” he added as he stepped up to the line to take Paul’s place.

Crack! Lanky’s rifle rang out—and there was a hole in the bullseye to show where he had struck.

“Just requires a man who knows how to handle it,” he calmly said as he raised his rifle for the next shot.

Crack!

“Wow! Where did that one go? Trying to hit the top of that hemlock?” yelled Ralph West, for there was not a mark on the board to show where Lanky’s second shot had gone.

“Just take a look in the bullseye and you’ll find both of them. I just pile them one on top of another!” Lanky calmly let his rifle drop to the ground.

Ralph and Buster raced to the target and looked carefully. It was Ralph who spoke:

“Both in the same spot!”

Frank Allen did not attempt to restrain his smile, for he knew that Lanky was a good shot, one of the best in Columbia, and he was amused by the bombastic attitude that Lanky had taken, realizing that Lanky, unassuming ordinarily, was just putting this on to-day for the fun of it. Frank knew that Lanky himself had not been certain whether or not he had put his second shot on top of the first.

Lanky took his third shot, permitted him by their unwritten rules that when a boy hit the bullseye he was entitled to another shot at once.

This time Frank watched the level of Lanky’s rifle, and smiled broadly again as he realized that Lanky was deliberately shooting over the top of the ravine. When his shot rang out there was no additional mark on the target.

“Just look in the bullseye where the others went,” he calmly said, and the same two boys, Paul and Buster, hurried to the target to see if this could possibly be true.

Lanky turned to Frank, saw the broad smile on Frank’s face, and whispered to him:

“Shot over the top of the ravine. Bet they’ll say I hit in the center again.”

Just then Paul, spokesman for the two, called out:

“Right in the center again! That’s some shooting, Lanky! Three of them right in the middle!”

Frank did not restrain himself any longer.

“You fellows certainly are easy. Don’t you know that Lanky deliberately shot away over the top of the target, just to see if you could find his mark in the center?”

“Hay!” yelled Lanky Wallace. “Wait a minute. Who are the judges? I appeal to the judges. They said I hit in the middle again. How about it, Paul?”

If any one else had said anything about it, perhaps Paul Bird would have stood by his guns and may have reiterated his decision. But Paul knew that Frank’s eye was good, and he knew that Frank Allen had caught on to some kind of joke.

Frank stepped to the line and pushed Lanky aside. And Lanky gave way for his friend, laughing heartily at the way in which he had put over a practical joke on the boys.

Frank Allen’s rifle was a repeater, and when he took his stand in front of the target he determined he would fire three times very quickly to see what were the results.

Crack! Crack! Crack!

As he sighted and made his first shot he drew back the ejector and made the second, following which he as quickly made the third.

“Wow!” yelled two of the boys whose sight was best. “Made the ring of the bullseye on all three of them and didn’t pile them up, either!”

Even from the distance at which they stood, all of the boys could see that Frank had put three straight shots, made as closely together as was possible, at the edge of the bullseye, each one scoring.

“That was great——”

“Help—Help!”

A girl’s voice just over the top of the ravine to their right reached the boys. It was a sincere cry for help.

All bantering stopped. The boys turned their eyes toward the spot from which the cries had come.

“Help! Help!”

Two different voices sounded this time.

“Helen and Minnie!” cried Frank, as he took a firmer grip on his rifle and leaped for the opening up the right side of the ravine, from which direction the cries, mingled now with another voice, had come.

“And in trouble!” came from Lanky. “Come on, fellows, make it snappy! They may need us the worst way!”