“I don’t see why Jake and Sam didn’t hurry back here to help us,” said one lumberman.
“That’s so,” agreed another. “It would have been a lot easier if they had been here.”
Just then the foreman looked up, after the hardest part of the work had been finished, and he said:
“There come Jake and Sam now.”
Surely enough, the chute builders were approaching.
[162]“Well, you took your own time getting here,” said the foreman.
“Took our own time? What do you mean?” asked Jake.
“Didn’t you tell us to stay in the woods and finish making that new chute to send the logs down to the river?” asked Sam.
“Yes, but a while ago I sent the Curlytop boy to tell you to hurry back here and help us. We had an accident in the sawmill, but it’s all fixed4 now. Why didn’t you two come?”
“Because no one told us to,” was the answer.
“Didn’t you see Teddy?” asked the foreman, whose name was Tod Everett.
“Nary a sign of him,” answered Jake.
“Whew!” whistled Tod. “He must have wandered off—maybe he went fishing—and forgot to tell you. But he’s a pretty good boy for his age. I don’t believe he’d do a thing like forgetting on purpose.”
“What do you think happened?” asked Jake.
“I’m afraid he didn’t know in what part of the woods to look for you, though he was sure he knew his way,” said the foreman. “But maybe his mother saw him going and[163] called him back. I’d better go over to the house and find out. It’s getting late and will soon be dark.”
Tod Everett, the foreman, tried not to let his voice sound anxious as he asked Mrs. Martin:
“Is Teddy around?”
“No,” she answered. “Isn’t he over at the mill with you?”
The foreman shook his head.
“He was there,” he replied. “But we had an accident and——”
“An accident!” cried Mrs. Martin.
“Don’t be worried! It was just that one of the saws broke. No one was hurt, and Teddy wasn’t even around when it happened. But I needed Jake and Sam to help the other men, and I was going to send one of the men for them, over where they were building a chute, when Teddy offered to go. He said he knew the way.”
“Yes, I suppose he does,” agreed Mrs. Martin. “Didn’t he go?”
“I thought he had until Jake and Sam came back just now and said they hadn’t seen him,” went on the foreman. “I thought maybe you saw him starting off and called him back.”
[164]“No, I didn’t,” said Mrs. Martin. “I am afraid something may have happened to him,” she added.
“The only thing that could happen would be that he might get on the wrong trail and wander off a little bit,” said Tod. “I’ll get the gang out and we’ll soon find him.”
A few minutes later Mr. Martin arrived, and though he was worried when told about the absence of Teddy, he believed that the missing Curlytop lad would shortly be found.
“But it will soon be night!” his wife remarked.
“We’ll find him before then,” he said.
A searching party was quickly organized, two of them, in fact, one to go one way and the second another way. And as the shadows began to get longer, showing that darkness was on its way, the lumbermen, led by Mr. Martin, started off into the forest.
“Oh, I do hope they find Teddy before it gets dark!” sighed Janet.
“So do I,” murmured her mother.
Meanwhile perhaps we had better find out what happened to Teddy.
As I have told you, he thought he surely knew the way to the place where Jake and[165] Sam were working on the new lumber3 chute. He had been there before once or twice. But as he walked along and along the path he saw it growing fainter and fainter, showing that it was not much used.
And then Teddy knew that he was lost!
But he was a brave little fellow, and, brushing his curly hair back from his eyes, he picked up a stout5 stick for a club and walked on.
“I guess I’d better go back home,” he said to himself.
He turned about, and thought he started straight back over the way he came. But if you have ever been in the deep woods, you know how much one tree looks like another and that all the bushes seem the same. So Teddy could not tell when he had turned completely around to go back.
As a matter of fact, he turned only partly around and, instead of heading for the bungalow6, he was wandering away from it almost as much as when he started straight away to get the lumbermen.
For a time Teddy tramped on, quite sure he was going back to the bungalow. He was a little disappointed that he had not been[166] able to find the lumbermen to tell them to go back and help at the sawmill.
“I guess Mr. Everett will think I’m not much good,” mused7
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