"Blessed if I know," Freddy breathed back. "Certainly looks deucedly queer, though. Do you fancy that soldier chap is being held up, or is in trouble?" "I wouldn't know," Dawson grunted with a frown. "Maybe we should find out. But he didn't seem to act as though he were putting up any objections. I had the feeling there that he sort of smiled." "Me, too," Freddy replied with a nod. "I was wondering if you had seen it, or if it was just my imagination. Oh, it probably means nothing at all. We're just the suspicious type, I guess." Dawson stared at the crown of the hill for a moment, and then lowered his gaze to the ground right in front of him, deep in thought. "What are you thinking about. Dave?" young Farmer presently asked. "The one thing that doesn't seem to make sense," Dawson murmured after another moment or two of silence. "That gun ... and it certainly was a gun, wouldn't you say?" "Definitely," Freddy assured him. "Looked like a long-barreled automatic to me. But it was definitely a gun of some sort. Well, what about it?" "What's a civilian doing with a gun?" Dawson asked. "Particularly in these parts. This is a military zone, Freddy." "Perhaps it's the soldier's, and he let him look at it," young Farmer offered. Dawson just shrugged at that, and said nothing. He raised his eyes and stared at the shack into which the two figures had disappeared, and then presently he turned and looked questioningly at Freddy Farmer. "Well?" he said. "Well, what?" the English-born air ace replied innocently. "You know exactly what I mean!" Dawson snapped. "Do we take a look to make sure, or do we just skip the whole thing, and start back to the base?" "What do you think?" Freddy instantly countered with a question of his own. "Shall we, or shan't we?" Dawson hesitated a moment, and then pointed at Freddy's shoes and socks. "Put them on," he said. "Maybe it'll just be a horse-laugh on us, but maybe it isn't as it should be. It isn't picking season around here yet, and by rights I don't think there should be anybody living in those shacks. I ... Oh, heck! Call me a curious cuss if you want to, but things like this get my curiosity clicking. I have to find out one way or the other." "As though I hadn't known you long enough to realize that!" Freddy Farmer grunted, and began putting on his socks and shoes. "But for once I'm with you. It's aroused my curiosity, too. How do we operate? Walk right up there, or steal from bush to bush, your American Indian style?" "Neither!" Dawson snapped, and pointed to their right. "We use our heads, instead! We go back that way and circle up the rise from that end. Then we walk along with the shacks covering us. That way, if _we're_ surprised we can say that we were just taking a look at the lay-out. Just remember, one of them has a gun. And he might be the kind of a guy who asks questions _afterward_."