CHAPTER XVII. MORE TROUBLE AHEAD.
"What have you?" asked Step Hen, who, strange to say, in spite of hislame leg, arrived just a little in advance of the other two.
Giraffe was standing there, twisting that long neck of his this way andthat. He declined to say anything until Thad had arrived on the scene.Then, with an expressive pose, he pointed to the ground near his feet.
"What d'ye call that, eh? Tell me I ain't got the eye of an eagle?Somebody else might have gone stumping along, and never seen it. But youcan ketch a weasel asleep as easy as you can fool me."
"It's a trail, all right," said Thad.
"Say _his_ trail," persisted Giraffe.
"Bumpus did make it, that's certain," Allan broke in with.
"And _after_ the storm, too?"
"No question about that, because the rain hasn't washed the marks atall," was the joyous declaration of Allan.
"See?" cried Giraffe.
If he had been wearing a vest. Step Hen really believed the proud lengthyscout would have thrust his thumbs into the arm holes and assumed a pose,as though about to have his picture taken as a serious rival to Cooper's"Leatherstocking," the greatest of trail finders.
"What luck!" Step Hen broke out with.
"Luck nothing," flashed back Giraffe, refusing to be cheated out of anyof his honors. "It's the reward of patient, plodding work, and using eyesand brain right along. Now, if I'd been satisfied to limp along, lookingup at the sky, and all around, but never once on the ground, like somepeople I know do, d'ye suppose I'd ever run across this trail? Not much.Give Old Eagle Eye his due, Step Hen."
"Yes, he deserves it," said Thad, "because this is a most important find.It places us on top once more."
"Because now we've got something to work on," added Allan.
"Was this track made this morning?" asked Step Hen.
Allan shook his head.
"No," he replied, "I don't think so."
"But why shouldn't it be?" continued the other scout, bound to know.
"Why, you can see that the ground was still quite wet when he passedalong here. That wouldn't have been the case this morning, for in twelvehours or more it must have dried out pretty well," Allan explained.
"That's so; I never thought of such an easy explanation," Step Henadmitted.
"Oh! there's a heap of things about this business we don't know," saidGiraffe; "but it all sounds so mighty interesting I'm bound to learnright along."
They were following the new trail while exchanging remarks along thisline.
"One good thing about it," Thad went on to say, "we now know Bumpus musthave come through the storm all right."
"However did he do it?" murmured Giraffe, perplexed because thetenderfoot was proving such a wonder.
"Three to one he found a hollow tree and crawled in," grumbled Step Hen."With the luck he's got, why of course lightning never struck there;while with me it was just sure to."
"Well," remarked Thad, "between you and me I don't believe Bumpus woulddo that, because we were talking of lightning only the other day. He hadan uncle who was killed that way when a tree was struck; and Bumpus saidnobody would ever get him to take such chances. I remember his asking meif it would be all right to crawl in a hollow log that lay flat on theground, and I told him yes. So if he was able to find a log big enough tohold him, I guess that's what he did."
Giraffe gave a whistle. There was a little trace of envy in his manner,for Giraffe was a boy, and it did seem to him Bumpus was developing alongthe lines of a scout altogether too fast.
"I see your finish as patrol leader, Thad," he remarked. "That Bumpus hasjust waked up, and there's no telling what he'll do. I expect we'll allbe kowtowing to him yet, like he was a real Chinese mandarin."
"Glad of it," laughed Thad. "And it would tickle me a lot, I tell you, ifa few more scouts would take a notion to wake up."
"Well," returned Giraffe, "they may, yet. I know two that are diggingknuckles into their eyes right at this minute, and stretchin' and yawnin'like they just meant to stir out of their dope sleep; eh, Step Hen?"
"That's so, Giraffe! Bumpus has set us the pace, I tell you," came thereply.
"What do you make of the trail, Allan?" the scoutmaster asked.
"About this," replied the tracker. "Bumpus was leg-weary about this time.Plenty to show it. And I wouldn't be surprised if we came on his campbefore long. I've seen where he stepped out of his way, looking for drywood, and then went on again, as if not satisfied."
"Hurrah for Bumpus! He's our pard;" exclaimed Step Hen, glad to even baskin the reflected light of so much glory.
"I wonder, now," Giraffe remarked, his thoughts naturally turning in theone direction, "was he able to make a fire? Lots of fellers that like tocall themselves scouts wouldn't know how, when every stick of wood wassoaking wet after such a rain."
"Oh! they ain't all such fire cranks as you've always been, Giraffe,"ventured Step Hen. "And I say it's good for the country they ain't. Ireckon the whole wood supply of the United States would have been used upby now if the rest of the scouts had their minds set like you."
"But wait and see," said Thad. "I've got a notion that Bumpus is going tosurprise some of us a lot more. Fact is, I believe he's just had his mindset on a hike like this for some time, because he's been asking dozens ofquestions of me, and setting the answers down in that little note-book ofhis, till he half filled it."
"Was one of them about makin' 'a fire after a rain?'" demanded Giraffe.
"Just that," replied Thad.
"You told him how to dig out the dry heart from a stump or a log, tostart his fire with, didn't you, Thad?"
"Explained it all fully," answered the patrol leader.
"Oh! if that's the case I just guess he will have made a fire. It's easy,once you've been shown how," grumbled Giraffe.
"But you had to be told how, once, don't forget, Giraffe," Thad went onto say. "Be generous now, and remember that Bumpus has had his outdooreducation sadly neglected. I'm glad he's showing new life, and I hope itwill keep right along. I believe it will. That's the beauty of this scoutbusiness--once a boy gets a taste of these many things that call forself-reliance and thought, he keeps on wanting to know more. His appetitebecomes enormous; but the food supply in the shape of information reallyhas no limit, you understand."
"I'm going in for it with all my heart and soul, Thad," asserted Giraffe,more seriously than the patrol leader had known him to be for a longtime.
"Me too," echoed Step Hen. "It's a good thing to know how to save afeller's life if he gets near drowned, cuts his foot with an axe, getsshot by accident, or else has the hard luck to run up against a meanrattler."
"And you can count on me to help you all I'm able to," said Thad. "Thereare a lot of things I don't know, myself. Allan, here, is teaching me aheap about following a trail, and I'm enjoying it more than I canexplain. Nothing like the practical experience, after all. Thebook-taught scout is all very well, but he has to change a lot of hisideas when he comes to see the same things really and truly done. Andsome of them are so different from his notion that he can hardlyrecognize 'em. What is it, Allan?"
This last was directed toward the tracker, who had suddenly shownevidences of excitement. They saw him bend down and more closely examinethe ground in front.
Then he whistled, and turned a face toward his chums on which they couldplainly read new anxiety.
"It beats anything how they could have just happened to cross the trailof Bumpus," he observed.
Thad instantly jumped at conclusions.
"Meaning our old acquaintances. Hank Dodge and Pierre Laporte?" he said.
"Here are their footprints as plain as anything," continued Allan. "Lookfor yourselves, because all of you know what they were like. Here's whereHank rested the butt of his gun on the ground, while he talked it overwith Pierre; and yes, he even emptied his pipe right at this place,knocking it on his shoe, because you ca
n see some half-burned tobacco inthis footprint."
"Do you think they knew who Bumpus was?" asked Thad.
"They could guess, easy enough, after remembering what we said about ourhaving a tenderfoot chum wandering around here by himself," was theprompt reply of the trail finder.
"But then, it wasn't any of their business," Giraffe went on to say."They might have had curiosity enough to figure out who Bumpus was; butthey'd never seen him, and so of course he hadn't done anything to injurethem."
He looked troubled, though, even while thus trying to assure himself thatBumpus could not be in any peril because of these two ugly timbercruisers.
"But his chums had riled them up considerably," Allan went on, "andperhaps they were mean enough to think they could hit us, throughBumpus."
Step Hen ground his teeth in anger, while his eyes flashed ominously.
"Did they change their course right here, Allan?" he asked.
"Just what they did," was the reply.
"And followed after our chum?" Step Hen went on.
"You can see for yourself that their prints blot his out in places," theother replied.
"Come on!" said Step Hen, shaking his gun furiously.
The Boy Scouts Through the Big Timber; Or, The Search for the Lost Tenderfoot Page 17