Harry Arnold sat on a rock by the roadside, eating raisins out of a small pasteboard box. On the ground lay his canvas pack, and against it leaned his rifle. The air was brisk, for the night was well along, but he wore no jacket, and the double row of pearl buttons on his blue flannel shirt shone occasionally in the fitful gleams of moonlight. The moon was working like a suffragette for its rights, but was continually being effaced by the clouds which were rapidly coming to monopolize the sky. If the breeze continued to increase Harry would, perhaps, compromise with it by getting out a thin sweater, but under no circumstances would he so far yield as to put on a coat. The matter of attire was his weak point, and his total absence of any interest in the scout regalia was the source of a great deal of sorrow to Gordon. Once he tightened the thin book-strap which he used for a belt and put his belt ax into his canvas bag. Once he leaned and fastened the laces in his mooseskin moccasins. He was as slender as a boy could be without being noticeably thin,—gracefully slender, one would say.
At the present moment he was just passing from the stage of mild curiosity into that of anxiety for his young friend. For, making full allowance for delays caused by inquiries and for Gordon’s independent propensity to amble along in search of treasure, he was already very much overdue.
“I bet he shows up with a fifty-cent piece that he’s found, or a lady’s buckle, or a rusty jack-knife,” said Harry.
But Gordon did not show up with any of these things, and when an hour and a half had gone by and still he did not come, Harry became seriously anxious. He knew Gordon’s tendency to jump the track, as he called it, and he thought it not at all improbable that he would any minute hear, from the thicket, the hollow hand clap, merging into a rubbing sound, which so accurately simulated the noise made by a four-footed beaver. It had cost the patrol some trouble and not a little expense to get this sound from first sources, and learn to make it, and you might practise it a week and not fool a beaver; but Gordon had it pat.
So Harry did not think it wise to leave the spot for long at a time. At length, however, he tied a wisp of grass around a sapling, and concealing his bag in the undergrowth started down the road along which Gordon should come. A walk of fifteen minutes brought him to a house where a dog barked at him vociferously. He did not waken the inmates, for he knew that if Gordon had passed or called at the house, he would have heard the distant barking. Another fifteen or twenty minutes brought him to a ramshackle building, the home of one of the unprosperous farmers of the district. Here he made inquiries, but the farmer, roused from his sleep, was very brief and surly and had seen no one. Harry thanked him with unaffected courtesy and went on.
What surprised him most was that the occasional moonlight showed him no footprints. After a few minutes he came to a little opening at the left of the road and, straining his eyes, looked down through a vista of trees which ran through the woods at a direct right angle from the road. This reminded him that he had looked through a similar vista on the west side of the straight road on which he had gone north. So there was evidently a woodland track connecting the two roads he and Gordon had taken, which did not show on the map. Turning rather abruptly into this woodland byway were two wide concave tracks. He walked a little farther down the road and in a flare of moonlight discovered a perfect carnival of footprints. They faced in every direction, north, south, east, west. There were scoopy indentations showing the heel counter of a shoe, and little points in the ground, indicating the downward thrusts of a toe.
“There’s only one thing lacking,” said Harry; “I wonder where she waited.” He walked over to the stone wall and picked up a little reticule containing, on hasty inspection, sixteen cents, a handkerchief, and a bottle of smelling salts. This he thrust into his pocket. He also thrust his hands into his pockets and smiled.
“I bet he enjoyed this,” he soliloquized; “I can just see him standing here watching—and waiting for a chance to spring a good turn.”
He was perfectly satisfied that an auto had broken down. He picked out where a man had lain on his stomach, had knelt, had lain on his back. He put big prints and little prints together, like a picture puzzle, and made human attitudes out of them. And he concluded that this interesting exhibition, right in Gordon’s line, was accountable for the boy’s delay. The auto had evidently turned down the wooded byway in order to get into the better road. That Gordon should have abandoned his investigations to be carried to his destination in an auto seemed hardly probable, except on the theory that he was on the trail of a good turn. But what other explanation was there?
Acting on this theory, he turned back, sure that he would find Gordon waiting for him. When he was within hailing distance of the point where the roads converged he made the Beaver call, and was surprised that it was not answered. Presently he reached the spot. The rock was empty, the wisp of grass was as he had left it on the sapling. The moon was behind a cloud now, so he lit a match and examined the eastern road. There were the auto tracks, but running along one of these with lighted matches for fifty yards or so (covering the spot where the two roads met), he could find no interruption in the concave line. The auto had not stopped. It had gone straight on along the road which skirted Dibble Mountain.
Now, Harry was truly alarmed and more than perplexed. It was late at night, the moonlight was fitful and uncertain, it was more often pitch dark than not. He did not like to give up and rig his shelter for the night. Idly he picked up the empty raisin box. Above him rose almost sheer the grim, black side of the mountain. Soon he must eat something, at any rate, for he was cruelly hungry.
“Kid,” he said aloud, “where are you, anyway?”
And then, on the minute, the answer came. Over in the west—a mile—two—three,—he did not know,—there flickered a tiny light in the darkness. Presently it grew larger, then disappeared, then came again. Half interested, in his preoccupation, he waited for it to reappear. Now it came and went, rapidly, in alternate flashes. He looked behind him into the east to see if there were any answering light, but the flame came jumping out faster and faster, as if to say, “Look here, you—I have something to say—wait.” He waited, and when it came again it stayed, one, two seconds. Instantly he was on his feet. It disappeared and showed again for just a fraction of a second, then flared steadily, then showed for another fraction of a second. He watched it intently as it came and went. Now came a longer pause between the flashes.
And on the bottom of the little raisin box that Harry held he had written with the lead of a rifle cartridge the letters CAMP.
He did not write the arbitrary signs for translation later; he took the message in plain English, with never doubt or hesitancy, and in good time he had it all.
“All right, Kid,” he said, smiling; “glad to hear from you,” and dropped the cartridge into his pocket.
He was much relieved, of course, and very curious. Taking his pack and rifle, he ran up the road until he came to the first turn. The distant fire now burned steadily, though not as high as before, and he could see that the road he had reached must lead in its direction. He was to go down this road and watch any one he met. He hid his pack near the roadside, took his rifle, and crept stealthily along through the trees which bordered the road. His toes, free and pliant in their soft moccasins, pinned and held the twigs on which he stepped and he made no sound. Now and then a low, sudden scurrying told him that he had disturbed some smaller creature of the wood, but save for these trifling sounds he walked in perfect silence.
The moon edged slowly from behind a cloud. “That’s right,” he whispered, “bully for you—be a scout—come on out and help.” Perhaps the moon was influenced by his persuasive words and felt that such a boy on such a business and against such odds was entitled to all the help that she could give. In any event, she sailed majestically clear of her encumbrances and, as sure as you live, smiled a broad scout smile down upon Harry Arnold. “Now you’re talking,” commented Harry. “Keep it up and I’ll see you get the bronze medal—only keep it up.”
He crept up to the road and looked for footprints, but found none of recent making. His information was pitiably meager. A scout had been robbed, and it was evidently suspected that the robber or robbers had taken this road. That was all he knew. No one had passed here lately, that was sure. He assumed that the signalers had good reason to believe that some one had taken this direction. He figured that he could get to the vicinity of the fire inside of an hour. So it would work the same the other way. He would conceal himself and watch the road for an hour. If he saw no one, he would simply assume that the robber had not taken the open road.
Now, if he had carried out this plan, he would shortly have seen the two boys who had set out to find him. But Harry Arnold, Scout, was a mile off the road when these boys passed, and this is how it happened.
Before settling down to watch the road, he noticed a small bridge a few yards farther along under which a stream flowed. You could canoe from the Albany scouts’ camp to Lake Champlain on this stream, but Harry knew nothing of the Albany camp. For all he knew, the Morse message had come from the Oakwood scouts. In quest of a draught of water, he went stealthily down the bank. He knelt, looked at the water, felt of it, and shook his head. Then he stood on the brink of the stream with his two hands resting on the bridge, which was about level with his shoulder. Thus he craned his neck, looking up and down the road. Satisfied, he vaulted silently up to the planking. His spring was as graceful and agile as a panther’s. Instinctively, he looked down to see if he had left any sign, for it is part of the A B C of scouting to leave no clue behind, whatever your business, except what you leave for a purpose. There on the edge of the planking were the wet prints of his two hands. “Humph,” said he, and studied them closely. Then he knelt, felt of one, daintily, softly, and brushed his two hands together. “Dried quick,” said he. He leaped down to the bank and felt of the water.
“Tisn’t so muddy, either.” He placed his hands on the planking over the two marks. They did not match his. “I didn’t think I had a paw like that,” he said.
He looked beneath him on the bank where the dank grass was flattened. “Too clumsy to vault it,” was his comment. “One of those big gawking country jays, I guess.” He crept up the bank to the road, where the moonlight flickered down through the branches of a willow tree. Reaching up, he wriggled a broken limb, then smilingly kicked a small twig that lay in the road. Crossing, he found a ruffled place, half in the road and half in the bordering growths, where the brush seemed to be trampled down. All this he examined in an amused, half-careless way. Presently he took a short run and leaped across the road. “Easy enough,” he said. Stooping, he carefully examined the ground and rose triumphant, holding a small, flat paper package in his hand. “Maunabasha!” he whispered to himself. (Maunabasha was the good Indian spirit that occasionally smiled on his endeavors.) He lighted a match and read the lettering on the package:
FARMER’S FRIEND PLUG CUT
THE TOBACCO OF QUALITY
A SOLACE TO THE TIRED TOILER
THE AROMA OF THE HARVEST FIELD
Harry took a whiff of the aroma of the harvest field. “The harvest field could sue for damages on that,” he thought. But despite his scout prejudice against tobacco, he was forced to admit that this little package had done him a good turn. Here was the unmistakable proof of a human presence, and it had not been here long, for it was fresh, unstained, and dry.
He put it in his pocket and went down the bank into the long meadow grass that skirt............