“There,” Step Hen was saying eagerly; “they’re taking stock of what’s been hooked, and my stars! just look at the way Giraffe throws his hands up, will you? If that doesn’t tell the story, then I’m away off in my guess. I just wager we’ve been cleaned out for keeps, and our little tummies will call in vain for their accustomed rations. I wonder how it feels to starve to death!”
“Oh! quit talking that way, Step Hen,” wailed Bumpus; “we ain’t going to waste away like all that. Give Thad a chance to think up how to win out. Besides, didn’t you hear Giraffe say there was lots of fat game on this island; yes, and fish in the river to boot. I’m not going to give up so easy; there’s alwayssomethingto fall back on, if it gets to the worst.”
“Yes,” added Step Hen maliciously, “that’s what shipwrecked sailors have to do when they cast lots; and I’m glad now I wasn’t built like a roly-poly pudding. It’s too tempting when hard times come along.”
Bumpus, of course, understood that his chum was only joking, but nevertheless he drew a long breath, and remained very quiet for quite some time after that, as though busied with uneasy thoughts.
“Now they’re starting off again,” remarked Davy, “and I guess it’s to follow the trail of the thief away. I wonder if we could track him to where he hangs out, so as to make him hand over our property.”
“I allow, suh,” Bob White broke in with, “that by the time we did that same there would be mighty little of our food left. He must have been pretty hungry to take the chances he did when he crawled into our camp, and with all these guns around in plain sight.”
“Let’s keep along after the boys,” suggested Step Hen, “and see what they run up against.”
The idea appealed to his companions, for they all started off, though maintaining the same relative distance from Thad and his backers, so as not to interfere with the work. Step Hen took occasion to bend down when he came upon a spot where the imprint of the unknown man’s knee could be seen, and looked at it intently, though finally giving it up as a task beyond his ability.
“Knees all make the same kind of dragging mark to me,” he told the others, who had waited to hear his report, “and I can’t tell one from another. If it was Bumpus here, now, who had done this trick in his sleep, I wouldn’t be able to say for sure, though like as not he’d bear deeper’n this mark shows.”
“Well, since Bumpus wasn’t outside of his blanket once all night long, you can’t saddle this job on his poor shoulders. He’s got enough to carry as it is, see?” and the stout boy put all the emphasis possible on that last word, as though he meant to make it decisive.
“They seem to be getting close to the bushes now,” Bob White observed.
“And once he got in there mebbe the thief would rise to his feet to walk away,” added Step Hen. “If Thad beckons you’ll know he’s settled it in his mind to follow the trail, and wants all of us who own guns to rally around him.”
“How about the rest; what will they be doing?” asked Smithy.
“Tending camp, of course,” replied the other. “Think now we know we’ve got a thief for a neighbor we want him to steal our blankets next? A nice pickle we’d be in without some way to keep warm nights. Remember, if you are left on guard, to defend the blankets with your very lives, both of you!”
This sort of lurid talk of course thrilled Bumpus very much, for he had a habit of taking what the others said literally, and could not see the vein of humor apt to lie back of bombastic vaporings. He was rubbing his fat hands one over the other in a nervous way, and alternately watching what Step Hen did, and then how the others were coming on.
They could see that Thad and his two fellow scouts were just back of the first fringe of bushes. They had possibly made some sort of discovery, because all of them seemed to be down on hands and knees, with their faces close to the earth, and apparently examining certain impressions.
“I wonder what’s up now?” ventured Davy.
“They’ve run on something that’s staggered the bunch, you can see easily enough,” Step Hen went on to say excitedly; “and I’m trying to make up my mind whether after all itwasa man crawling along that made those queer marks. P’raps, now, some sort of big wild animal might have done it. We haven’t seen a single footprint, you remember, to tell the story. I wish I knew what they’ve run across. Why don’t they call us over, and let us in? It isn’t just fair to keep us worrying like we are.”
Just as though Thad might have heard this complaint on the part of Step Hen, he turned toward them, and raising his hand beckoned.
“There, boys, he wants us to come over!” exclaimed Davy, exultantly; “I thought it’d strike us pretty quick; Thad isn’t the kind to forget his mates. And we’ll soon be put wise to the facts.”
They hurried to join the other three, who still stood at the same place, ever and anon looking seriously down at the ground, as though hardly able to believe the evidence of their eyes.
When Step Hen came running with the other four tagging at his heels, Thad held up his hand.
“Hold on right there, boys!” he remarked; “we don’t want you to cut in and rub it all away before you’ve had a chance to look for yourselves.”
Of course this caused them to turn their attention to the ground, and it was easy to see that the crawling thief had here risen to his full height, though possibly bending over more or less as he continued his retreat.
“Then it was a man, after all!” was what Bumpus said; and there was a positive air of relief about his voice, as though he had taken Step Hen’s hint seriously, and even fancied a terrible wild beast might be hovering near them.
“Yes, but look closer, and see if you can recognize anything familiar about the marks?” advised Thad.
Accordingly, all of them leaned over and looked.
It was Step Hen who gave the first startled cry.
“Oh! Thad, what does this mean?” he burst out with; “it’s the same broken shoe, bound together with an old rag, that we saw when we looked for the marks of Wandering George, in the mud of the road; but how in the wide world could he get over here?”
“What’s that you say?” burst out Davy, looking as startled as though, to use the words of Giraffe, he “had seen his great grandfather’s spook!”
“Wandering George! Out here on our island, too!” gasped Bumpus, just as though they had a permanent right to the strip of land in the middle of the river—“our” island he called it.
Of course all of them turned toward Thad, as usual, expecting him to give the answer to the question that puzzled them. The patrol leader laughed as he pointed down once more to that tell-tale track.
“No going behind the returns, is there, boys?” he said. “Every one of you knows that footprint by heart, because we took the pains to study it. And the man whose old battered shoe is being held on with a rag we know is Wandering George. He is responsible for taking our provisions. Right now you can imagine how much he’s enjoying that cheese and crackers we expected to last us out to-day.”
Giraffe groaned.
“And that fine strip of bacon we lifted at the time we left the shanty-boat!” added Step Hen, with a dismal look toward Bob White, who raised his eyes as if in horror at the idea of such desecration.
“It’s easy to understand that the hobo’s on the island, but how in the wide world could he get here without wings? That’s what I want to know,” Allan observed; which at least went to show that so far no one had been able to figure it out, for if anybody could, surely the Maine boy, who had followed many a difficult trail in his time, ought to be able to.
“Mebbe he crossed over to the island when the water was low?” suggested Step Hen, but the idea was instantly scorned by Giraffe.
“You forget that the river’s been on the boom for some little while,” he said loftily; “and we happen to know that George wasn’t far ahead of us just yesterday. Now, you’re wondering if I’ve got a theory of my own, and I’ll tell you what I think. Somehow or other George must have been in a boat, and came that way. How do we know but what he was trying to cross over, and the current swept him down stream? Then, again, he might have been in some house or barn that was carried away by the flood, and managed to get ashore here.”
“Say, Thad, don’t you remember what I told you last night, when the rest were making so much noise, and I was dead sure I heard a shout?” interrupted Davy, with considerable excitement.
“Is that so?” demanded Giraffe; “well, that might have been the time he landed here, and discovering that we wore uniforms, he was afraid to break in, so like as not he just hung around and watched us, till he got a chance to sneak all our bully grub.”
“Thad, you haven’t told us whatyouthink yet,” remarked Smithy, who had been listening to all this excited talk, and hearing so many wonderful suggestions made that he was quite bewildered; “did this tramp fly over here; was he washed up on the island by the flood; or did he find himself castaway on some floating cabin, and manage to get ashore by good luck?”
Thad must have been using his head to some advantage during this time, for he appeared to have made up his mind decisively.
“To tell you the truth,” he remarked, “I don’t take any stock in either the flying scheme or the one that brings in a floating hencoop or cabin to account for Wandering George’s being here. I feel pretty sure he came on board a boat.”
“Is that so, Thad?” Giraffe went on to remark; “what kind of a boat would you say it was, now?”
“Oh! something in the shape of a shanty-boat!” continued the other.
“You mean like the one that brought us here?” demanded Step Hen.
“The same one!” Thad shot back, with an emphasis that staggered his hearers, since all sorts of exclamations burst from their lips.
“Thad, do you really mean that?”
“It wouldn’t be like you to crack a joke, when we’re all mixed up like this.”
“A passenger aboardourboat, and none of us ever dream of it; well, I must say you’ve got me guessing, Thad. However could that be?” and Bumpus plucked at the sleeve of the patrol leader, as though thrilled through and through by the staggering announcement just made.
“Well, you see, it’s just dawned on me,” Thad commenced to say, “and I haven’t had much time to figure it out myself, but the more I think it over the stronger my belief grows. Look back a bit, and you’ll remember that we found a light in the cabin when we boarded the boat.”
“Yes, that’s so, Thad,” assented Giraffe.
“And supper cooking, too,” added Bumpus.
“With not a soul in sight, which we thought mighty queer,” Step Hen went on to say, as his contribution.
“And all the while we stayed there, up to the time the cable broke, there was never a sign of the man that owned the boat, either,” Davy reminded them.
“You remember,” Thad continued, “that we figured out at first the owner of the boat must have seen us coming, and hid himself somewhere ashore, hoping we’d take a look about and pass on. We even guessed he must have some reason to fear arrest, and thought we were connected with the state militia. But after learning of Wandering George’s being here on the island I’ve hatched up another idea, and I’ll tell you just what it runs like.”
“Good for you, Thad; we’re listening like everything,” muttered Bumpus, at the elbow of the chief scout.
“I’ve come to the conclusion,” Thad began, “that the two tramps must have chased the owner of the shanty-boat away some time before we struck in. Now that I’m on the track I can remember there were certain signs of confusion aboard when we first entered; things seemed tossed around, as if someone had been looking in places for hidden valuables. That would be just what these two yeggmen were apt to do, you see. And while one began to cook some supper, the other may have started in to ransack the place.”
“Yes, and about that time they glimpsed us coming along; is that the way you figure it out, Thad?” asked Allan eagerly; for this explanation on the part of his chum appealed strongly to him.
“Yes, they saw a bunch of fellows in khaki running toward the boat,” pursued the scout master; “and as it was too late for them to make a safe getaway, they just lifted a trap in the floor of the cabin, and dropped into the hold of the boat.”
“Je-ru-sa-lem!” gasped Giraffe, “now, what d’ye think of that? All the time we were aboard the old boat George and his pal were hiding in the hold, and waiting for us to vacate the ranch! Thad, I honestly believe you’ve struck oil.”
“But,” interposed Step Hen, who on this occasion seemed disposed to be the only doubter, “why wouldn’t they have made some attempt to escape while we slept, before the flood got so bad that the boat broke away from her moorings?”
“There must have been some reason,” Thad told him; “and we may be able to give a stab at it, even if we never know the real truth. If you look back again, Step Hen, to how we were sprawled about on the floor of that little cabin, trying to get some sleep, and wrapped in our blankets, you’ll likely remember that the eight of us managed to cover about all the limited space there was around.”
“Every foot of the floor, for a fact, Thad,” Davy admitted; “and I even threatened to hang by my toes from a hook, and sleep like a bat does, only Giraffe told me all the blood would run to my head, because that was the only empty place in my makeup.”
“Well, somebody must have been lying on that trap door, and whenever the men below tried to raise it they understood there was nothing doing,” Thad explained.
“Yes, that carries it up to the time we broke loose, and started on our wild ride down the flood,” Step Hen admitted; “but you’d think they’d have let us know about having passengers aboard. Whenever we bucked up against a rock, and the bally old tub threatened to turn upside-down, think how scared George and his pal must ’a’ been. Whew! it was bad enough above-decks, let alone being shut down there, and not knowing what was happening.”
“Of course I can’t tell you what they thought, and why they didn’t try to communicate with us,” Thad went on. “It might be they felt that if they had to choose between giving themselves up or staying down in the hold and taking their chances they’d prefer the last. But when we left the boat I honestly believe they were aboard still.”
“Yes, and they’d guess she had struck shore, from the steady way she hung there,” Giraffe continued, taking up the story in his turn, “and of course they knew that we were clearing out. So, what did they do but follow suit, as soon as they thought the coast was clear.”
“How about it now. Step Hen; any more objections?” asked the patrol leader.
“I guess I’m through, Thad,” acknowledged the other slowly, as though still unable to fully grasp the strange thing; “you’ve made out a pretty strong case, and I don’t glimpse a break in the chain. That’s the way you always hammer it in. If that hobo is here, then chances are he did come along with us, even if we never smelled a rat.”
“In the excitement of getting away,” Thad resumed, “I forgot I’d noticed cracks in the cabin floor that looked like a trap leading down into the hold of the boat. That was partly why I had Giraffe go back to where we left the shanty-boat. You remember he came and told us it had been driven off the point by that big squall.”
“I’m wondering what would have happened if you’d thought about the hold under the cabin before we ever quitted our old craft?” Giraffe remarked.
“Oh! we’d have found what was down there, and with guns in our hands could have easily cowed the hoboes,” Allan told him.
“Fight or no fight, that’s what we would have done!” declared Bumpus vigorously.
“Listen to him, will you?” chuckled Step Hen; “isn’t he just the fierce Cossack, though? I can see that tramp army wilting when they sighted Bumpus threatening to jump down on ’em. Who’d blame anybody for throwing up the sponge rather’n be mashed flat by such a hippo?”
“Well,” remarked Giraffe, as he rubbed his hands together in a satisfied fashion, “one thing sure, our old luck’s still hanging on.”
“How do you make that out, Giraffe?” inquired Smithy.
“We started on this hike with the idea of overtaking the tramp who was wearing the coat the judge’s wife gave away by mistake, didn’t we?” the lengthy scout demanded. “Well, stop and think for a minute, will you, what’s happened to us? Here we are, marooned on an island, from which nobody can get away right at present unless he swims, and none of us feel like trying that in such cold water, do we? Did you ever know a hobo who would willingly take a bath? Well, put things together, and what do you get? Wandering George, coat and all let’s hope, is shut up here on this strip of ground with us; and all we’ve got to do is to round him up to-day. Now, do you see, Smithy?”
Somehow this plain way of putting the case appealed to every one of them; for immediately Bumpus was shaking hands with Step Hen, and as if to show their satisfaction over the way things were turning out some of the rest did likewise.
“Course,” said Giraffe, as he gave Davy’s digits a squeeze that made the other fairly wince, “we can’t say just how we’ll corner the slippery rat, but there’ll be a way, make up your mind to that, boys.”
“I’m only afraid it’ll be too late, Giraffe,” Bumpus was heard to remark, with a skeptical air.
“Too late for what?” demanded the tall scout, who had dropped to his knees, and was starting to follow the trail left by Wandering George, after the latter had gained his feet, and moved away from the vicinity of the camp.
“Why, there won’t be a sign of our grub left by that time, you see; George; he’ll be awful hungry, and it’s surprising what a lot of stuff a regular hobo can put away when he tries.”
“And hoboes ain’t the only ones, Bumpus,” intimated Davy; “I’d match you and Giraffe here against the best of ’em. But let’s hope we’ll find a way to get off this island before night comes, and strike a farmhouse where they’ll feed us like the Baileys did.”
“Oh! do you really think there’s a chance of that happening to us, Davy?” exclaimed Bumpus, intentionally omitting to show any ill feeling on account of the little slur concerning his appetite. “I’d be willing to even go without my lunch in the middle of the day if I could believe we’d be sitting with our knees under a groaning table to-night. Seems like when you’re beginning to face starvation every good thing you ever liked keeps popping up in your head.”
Giraffe at this juncture called out, and his manner indicated that he had made a discovery of some sort.
“What is it, Giraffe?” asked Thad.
“I just bet you he’s found where George sat down and ate up every crumb of that grub,” muttered Bumpus, whose mind seemed to be wholly concerned with the question of the lost supplies.
“George was joined here by his pal, who must have been hanging out, waiting for him,” Giraffe told them; and as he examined the tracks further he added; “and say, I reckon now that second fellow got hurt some way, while he was cooped up in the black hole under the cabin floor.”
“Now how do you make that out, Giraffe?” asked Davy.
“Why, I can see that he limps like everything,” the other went on to say, doubtless applying his knowledge of woodcraft to the case. “One foot drags every step he takes, and it didn’t do that before, I happen to know. That’s why George volunteered to do the cribbing all by himself, while the other waited.”
“That makes two to handle instead of one, doesn’t it?” Allan remarked; and once more Bumpus groaned.
“Two is a whole lot worse than one, to get away with things,” he observed, with a piteous air of resignation, as though he was now perfectly satisfied they would none of them ever see the first sign of the stolen provisions again.
“If there’s a trail why can’t we start in, and track the two hoboes down?” suggested Davy vigorously.
They had followed Giraffe, so that all of them were just back of him at this time. The tall scout, however, shook his head in a disappointing way.
“I’d like to try that the worst kind,” he remarked, “but I reckon it’s no go. You can hardly see the footprints here, and they get fainter as they go on. Besides, we’d make all manner of noise creeping through this scrub, and they’d be wise to our coming, so they could keep moving off. There’s a better way to capture George than that, fellows.”
“Yes,” added Thad, “we can comb the island from one end to the other. It can’t be of any great size, you see; and by forming a line across at the top we could cover about every foot of it. In the end we’d corner the tramps, and make them surrender. We’ve got the whole day before us, and the sun promises to shine, too, so we can count on its being warmer.”
“The whole day,” Bumpus remarked disconsolately, “that means twelve long hours, don’t it? Well, I suppose I can stand the thing if the rest of you can; but it’s really the most dreadful calamity that ever faced us. They say starving is an easy death, but it wouldn’t be to me.”
No one was paying any attention to his complainings, so Bumpus stopped short in order to listen to what the others were saying. Possibly he told himself that the best way to forget his troubles was to get interested in what was going on. And it might be there still remained a shred of hope in his heart that if they made a quick job of the surround, and capture, perhaps they might retake enough of the purloined food to constitute a bare meal at noon.
“First of all we’ve got to have our breakfast, such as it is,” Thad observed.
“Tea and grits—oh! my stars!” sighed Giraffe; whereupon Bob White turned upon him with the cutting remark:
“You ought to be thankful for the grits, suh, believe me; it satisfies me, let me tell you. I wouldn’t give a snap fo’ all the tea in China or Japan; but grits make bone and muscle. You can do a day’s work on a breakfast of the same. Only it takes a long time to cook properly, suh; and the sooner we get the pot started the better.”
“You attend to that, Bumpus, please,” said Giraffe, “and be sure you get enough to satisfy the crowd, even if you have to use two kettles, and the whole package of hominy. I want to talk things over with Thad here.”
Bumpus hesitated for a minute. He hardly knew which he wanted to do most, stay there and listen, or return to the fire and begin operations looking to the cooking of that forlorn breakfast.
Finally, as he received a message from the inner man that it was time some attention was paid to the fact that nature abhorred a vacuum he turned away and trotted toward the camp fire.
Giraffe, together with Thad and Allan, tried to follow the trail of the two tramps further, but soon gave it up. After all, the several reasons why they should turn to the other way of rounding up the concealed men appealed strongly to them.
Later on they returned to the camp, to sit around and wait for their breakfast to cook. Nobody looked very cheerful that morning. Somehow the fact that they were isolated there on that island with only one meal between them and dire hunger, loomed up like a great mountain before their mental vision.
In the end they found that grits did satisfy their hunger remarkably well; and taking Giraffe’s advice Bumpus had actually cooked the entire amount on hand, so there was plenty to go around three times.
The tea was another matter, for they had neither sugar nor milk to go with it, and although each fellow managed to drink one cup, some of them made wry faces while disposing of the brewing.
“Kind of warms you up inside,” commented Davy, “and that’s the only reason I try to get it down; but, oh! you coffee!”
“Here, none of that, Davy,” said Thad; “scouts have to make the best of a bad bargain, and never complain. We’d be feeling lots worse if it wasn’t for this breakfast.”
“Well, suh, I’m quite satisfied, and feel as if I’d had the pick of the land,” Bob White remarked stoutly.
“Yes, but you like the stuff, and I never would eat it at home,” complained Step Hen.
“Time you began to know what good things are, then, suh,” the Southern boy told him plainly.
Even Bumpus admitted that he felt very good after they had emptied both kettles of the simple fare. For the time being he was able to put the dismal future out of his mind, and actually smile again.
Thad had not told them as yet what plan he was arranging with regard to hunting down the tramps who were on the island with them, and of course most of the scouts were eager to know.
Accordingly, after the meal was finished, they began to crowd around and give the scout master hints that they were waiting for him to arrange the details of that “combing” business he had spoken of.
“It’s going to be a simple matter,” Thad remarked. “We’ll go to the place where the shantyboat went aground, and make our start from there, gradually stretching out until we cover the island from shore to shore, and in that way pushing our quarry further along toward the lower end.”
“And,” pursued Giraffe, following the plan in his mind, “as the hoboes will of course object to taking to the water, we’ll corral the pair in the end.”
“Do you reckon they’ve got any sort of gun along, Thad?” asked Step Hen; though it was not timidity that caused him to ask the question, for as a rule he could be depended on to hold his own when it came to showing fight.
“We don’t know, of course, about that,” he was told; “though it’s often the case that these tramps carry such a thing, especially the dangerous stripe like this Wandering George seems to be.”
“He didn’t pull any gun on the farmer, when Mr. Bailey caught him robbing his desk, you remember, Thad?” Davy mentioned.
“No, but he upset the lamp, and then skipped out, leaving the inmates of the farmhouse to fight the fire, which was a cowardly thing to do,” Bumpus observed.
“I hadn’t forgotten about the chances of them being armed when I spoke of forming a line across the island, and searching every foot of the same,” Thad explained; “and the way we’ll be safe in doing that I’ll explain. Now, we ought to leave two fellows to look after the camp, with a gun between them. The rest can be divided up into three squads, each couple having one of the other guns. We’ll manage to keep in touch with each other, as we work along, zigzag-like, and a signal will tell that the game has been started. Do you understand that?”
“Plain enough, Thad,” Giraffe told him, as he picked up his gun, and in this way signified that he was ready for the start.
“Huh! but who’s going to be left behind?” Bumpus wanted to know; his whole demeanor betraying the fact in advance that he could give a pretty good guess as to whooneof the unfortunates might prove to be.
“I think it would be wiser for me to appoint you and Smithy to that post of honor,” he was immediately informed by Thad; “and you want to understand it is just as important that you do your duty well here, as that we carry out our part of the game. A scout never asks why he’s told to do a certain thing, when perhaps he’d like to be in another position. Whether he serves as the hub, the tire, or one of the spokes, he feels that he’s an important part of the whole wheel, and without him nothing can be done. There’s just as much honor in guarding the camp as in creeping through the tangle of vines and scrub bushes. And, Bumpus, I’m the one to judge who’s best fitted for that sort of work.”
“Thad, I’m not saying a single word,” expostulated the stout scout; “fact is, if you come right down to brass tacks, I’m satisfied to stay here, rather than scratch my way along, and p’raps break my nose tumbling. And I’m sure Smithy is built the same way. I hope you’ll let me hold the gun you leave with us, which ought to be my own repeating Marlin, because it’s already proved its worth. And, Thad, you remember I shot it with some success the time we were out there in the Rockies after big game.”
“That’s only a fair bargain, Bumpus,” he was told by the scout master; “and you can consider it a bargain. We’ll look to hear a good report from you when we come back to camp again.”
“And with our prisoners in charge, too,” added the confident Giraffe.
Bumpus saw them depart with a gloomy look, as though he felt that all chances of winning new laurels had been snatched away when he was ordered to keep camp.
Whenever Thad Brewster started to do anything he went about it in a thorough manner. He was no believer in halfway measures, which accounted for much of the success that had crowned his efforts in the past, as those who have read former books in this series must know.
He arranged the beating party in such a way that Giraffe and Davy went together; Allan had Step Hen for a companion; while the Southern lad accompanied Thad himself.
Having given the camp keepers a few last instructions, with regard to remaining on the alert, and listening for any signals such as members of the Silver Fox Patrol were in the habit of exchanging while in the woods and separated, Thad led the way toward the upper end of the island.
They found no trouble in arriving there. The river had indeed fallen very much, and the flat rock upon which the nose of the shanty-boat had been driven by the fierce current was now away out of the water. Had the craft remained where it struck it would be high and dry ashore.
The boys would not have been human had they not first of all looked yearningly toward the shore, between which and themselves rolled a wide stretch of water. Still, as the sun shone brightly, and the air was getting comfortably warm, the outlook did not seem anything like that which they had faced on the preceding morning. And, besides, they had just eaten a breakfast that at least satisfied their gnawing hunger, and that counted for considerable.
Thad did not waste much time in looking around, but proceeded to business. He had already apportioned his followers, so that everyone knew who his mate was to be.
“Allan, you and Step Hen take the right third; Giraffe, cover the left side with Davy; and we’ll look after the middle,” he told them, in his quiet yet positive way, that caused the words to sink in and be remembered.
“And in case we run across George and his pal we’re to give a yell; is that the game, Thad?” asked the lengthy scout.
“Our old shout that we know so well, don’t forget,” he was told. “An ordinary whoop isn’t enough, for somebody might let out that kind if only he tripped and felt himself falling. If you want me to come across, bark like a fox three times. In case you get no answer, repeat the signal; and if that doesn’t fetch me, call out my name.”
“We’re on, Thad; is that all?” Giraffe asked impatiently.
“Go!”
With that they were off, three pair of eager human hounds, bent on discovering the hiding-place of the tramps who had for so long been hovering just ahead of them like one of those strange lights in swampy marshes, a jack-o’-lantern they call it, that keeps eluding your grasp, now appearing here, and then vanishing, to crop up suddenly in another place.
To begin with it seemed easy enough to move along. The scrub was not very dense at the upper end of the island, for some reason or other, but seemed to get heavier the further they advanced.
Acting on the suggestions of Thad, each couple spread out a little more as they continued to push on, although remaining in touch with one another. In this way it was possible to cover more ground than by keeping close together.
Giraffe was certainly in his element. He kept his gun-stock partly under his arm, and was ready to elevate the weapon at a second’s warning; in fact, as he prowled along in this way the tall scout looked the picture of a hunter expecting feathered game to flush before him, which he must cover instantly, or expect it to place obstacles between, as a woodcock always will.
Davy did not like to roam along entirely unarmed, and hence he had hunted up a club, which he gripped valorously. He kept just a little behind Giraffe, if an imaginary line were marked across the island from shore to shore. This was because he wished to allow the one who held the firearm a full sweep of territory in case he found occasion to shoot, or even threaten.
Now and then Giraffe would speak to his companion, as a rule asking him to “kindly give a poke in that patch of bushes, where it looks like a man might find it easy to hide”; or “peek into that hole between the rocks, Davy—don’t be afraid a bear’ll come out at you, ’cause there ain’t any such good luck waiting for us.”
By giving various signals the boys managed to maintain something like a straight line as they pushed on. They could see one another frequently, too, which enabled them to keep from forging ahead in any one place.
“Listen to the crows cawing, will you?” Giraffe presently remarked, as though the noise of the flock might be sweet music to his ears, since it told of the life in the open which Giraffe dearly loved.
“They’re a noisy lot, ain’t they?” remarked Davy; “whatever d’ye s’pose ails that bunch of crows, Giraffe? Would they scold that way if they just happened to see a pair of hoboes eating breakfast, d’ye think?”
“Well, it might be they would,” the other replied thoughtfully; “and come to think of it they’re somewhere down below us, ain’t they? Hunters often know when game is moving by the signs in the sky; for birds can see down, and they talk, you know, in a language of their own. I’ve often wished I could understand what crows said when they scolded so hard.”
Just there Davy began to move away from his partner again, as he tried to cover his share of the territory; so conversation died out temporarily between them.
They had passed the place where the camp fire burned, with Bumpus and Smithy watching their movements eagerly. The thick brush now hid the camp from their sight, and what lay before them they could only guess.
Once more Davy drew close to his mate, thrusting his club to the right and to the left, in the endeavor not to leave a stone unturned in clearing up the land.
“Wherever do you think they’ve gone, Giraffe?” he asked, as though beginning to feel the strain of the suspense that hung over them, as they continued this strange hunt for the tramps.
“It’s my honest opinion,” the other replied, “that we ain’t going to see a sign of ’em till we get away down to the other end. And they didn’t come through here, either, because we’d have run across some sign to tell us that.”
“Then how could they reach the lower end of the island?” demanded Davy quickly, thinking he had caught Giraffe in a hole.
“Why, they made off to the beach after they got the stuff, and trailed down that way, which you can understand must have been the easiest, all things considered,” the tall scout went on to explain. “I believe in applying that old principle, and figgering what you’d have done if it had been you. And anybody with horse sense’d know it was lots easier tramping on the shore, to this way of breaking through.”
“Still, Thad thought we ought to do it?” Davy remarked.
“Thad was right, as he nearly always is,” Giraffe pursued doggedly; “because this is the only way we can make dead sure. I’ve got a hunch that they built a fire and proceeded to cook a warm meal. Want to know what makes me think so? Well, we had an extra box of matches along, and that went with the rest of the things. George knew he needed it. Long before now they’ve had their fire, and it’s all day with that grub of ours. We’ll get it back when we surround the hoboes; but you won’t know it.”
“What if they won’t surrender when we ask ’em?” Davy wanted to know.
“They’d better go slow about that same,” he was immediately told, as Giraffe shook his head energetically; “we’ve got the law on our side, you see, after that pair breaking into the farmhouse the way they did, and showing themselves to be regular robbers as well as tramps, yeggmen they call that kind. If I pinked George, after seeing him threaten me, I couldn’t be held responsible for the same. When a man is a fugitive from justice, and the long arm of the law is stretched out to grab him, he hasn’t got any rights, you understand. Every man’s hand is against him, and he’s just got to take his medicine, that’s all.”
Giraffe had a little smattering of legal knowledge, and he certainly did like to hear himself talk, given half a chance. Just then Davy seemed to be glad to learn certain facts, upon which he may have been a little hazy.
“Didn’t I hear you talking with Step Hen the last time you crossed over to his line; or no, it must have been Bob White, because he’s with Thad in the middle track?” Giraffe asked, a short time later, as once more he and his partner came into touch.
“Yes, it was Bob speaking to me,” admitted the other, “and what d’ye think, he said he believed he had discovered a bee tree, and only wished we would be here long enough to get a chance at the honey.”
“Well, what next, I wonder?” ejaculated Giraffe, with the air of one who had received especially good news; “I always did say I liked honey about as well as anything that grew; but, then,” he added, as though seized with a sudden depressing remembrance, “what good would all the wild honey going do a fellow when he hasn’t got a cupful of flour to make a flapjack with, or a single cracker to eat with the nectar? Oh! rats! but this is tough!”
“Anyhow,” Davy continued, “Bob, he said the tree was a whopper for size, and the hive was away up in a dead limb that we couldn’t well reach; so I guess that winds it up for us this trip. And as you say, Giraffe, what good would just plain honey do a starving crowd? Give me bread before you try to plaster me with honey. Still, it’s queer how many things we keep finding on this same island, isn’t it?”
“There goes another rabbit right now, Davy; and I could have knocked him over as easy as you please, if I was hunting something to eat, instead ofmen! They always do say what strange things you do see when you haven’t got a gun; and with us it runs the other way; for we’ve got a shooting-iron, but dassen’t use the same for fear of alarming our human quarry.”
“You do manage to put things before a fellow the finest way ever, Giraffe,” Davy told him; “and some of these days I expect to see you making a cracking good lawyer, or an auctioneer, or something that requires the gift of gab. But seems to me we’ve been poking like this for a long time now. How much further d’ye think the island runs?”
“It’s some longer’n I had any idea would be the case,” admitted Giraffe; “but I reckon we’re shallowing up now. The shore line looks to me like it’s beginnin’ to draw in closer, every time I make the beach. If that’s so we ought to come together down at the lower end before a great while now.”
“Say, what if we do get there and never once sight George and his pal, Giraffe?”
“Aw! don’t be trying to get off conundrums on me, Davy; I never was much good guessing the answer,” the tall scout went on to complain. “It don’t seem like that could happen, because they’re here on our island, and we sure haven’t left a single place unsearched where a fox could hide. Don’t borrow trouble, my son. We’re bound to corral the pair down at the lower point; and they’ll throw up their hands when they see us coming, six abreast, with guns leveled and all that.”
“I hope so, Giraffe; I hope it turns out that way; but I’m not feeling as sure as you are. Something seems to keep on telling me we’re due for a big surprise, and I’m trying to shut my teeth, so as to be ready to meet it like a scout should always meet trouble.”