"Maybe we will," and Lil danced in glee at the possible chance of getting into trouble so their devoted swains could extricate them. "Maybe we will meet a drunken mountaineer--or maybe it will be a whole lot of drunken mountaineers, a camp of moonshiners--maybe they will capture Lucy and me and carry us to their mountain fastness and there hold us for ransom." "Huh! And what do you think Skeeter and I'll be doing while they are carrying you off?" sniffed Frank. "Standing still, I reckon, and weeping down our gun barrels!" "Well, s'pose they are all of them armed to the teeth, a company of stalwart brigands," suggested Lil, who, by the way, was something of a movie fan, "and they come swooping down on us, the leader bearing a lasso in his brawny hand." "Yes," put in Lucy, "and he will swirl it around and will catch both of you in the same coil and then will tie you to a tree there to await his pleasure. I think there had better be two leaders, though, Lil. So you can have one and I can have one. I bid for the biggest." "Bid for him! If you girls don't beat all! I do believe you would like to be attacked by outlaws," and Skeeter looked his disgust at the eternal feminine. "Of course we'd like it if it came out all right; that is, if the leaders fell in love with us and reformed and turned out to be gentlemen who took to moonshining and highwaying because they had been cheated out of their inheritances by fat-faced uncles in Prince Albert coats," and Lil looked very saucy as she switched on ahead of the others down the narrow trail. "And where would we come in?" asked Frank whimsically. "We would have to stay tied to the tree while you and Lucy acted about a thousand feet of reels. I tell you what I mean to do. I mean to train a squirrel to come gnaw me free. What you say to that, Skeeter?" "Squirrel much! I'm going to be so quick with my gun that the bold brigands will wish they had stayed with Uncle Albert. As for lassoing--I am some pumpkins myself with the rope. Look at this!" and twirling the gunnysack around with the lunch serving as ballast, Skeeter caught his chum neatly around the neck. "Oh, oh! You'll mash the sandwiches!" wailed the others. "Let's sit down and eat 'em up now," suggested Skeeter. "I am tired of being made the beast of burden. I believe in distribution of labor." "Why, Skeeter, we haven't walked a mile yet, and it can't be more than ten o'clock." "Well, then, my tumtum must be fast. I shall have to regulate it. It tells me it is almost twelve." No one had a watch so there was no way to prove the time except by the shadows, and Skeeter declared that the shadows on the mountain perforce must slant even at twelve. "Let's eat part of the lunch," suggested Lucy. "That will keep poor Skeeter from starving and lighten the load some, too. There is no telling what time it is, but if we are hungry I can't see that it makes much difference what time it is. I'm starved myself almost." "Me, too," chorused the others.