“There’s that railway whistle again,” remarked Andy, pausing while in the act of turning a flapjack, in the making of which he professed to be singularly adroit, so that he seldom lost a chance to mix up a mess for breakfast when the others would allow him.
“Guess the trains must have been passing all through the night, even if I didn’t hear any,” confessed Tubby frankly.
“Do you know, fellows,” asked Andy, since confession seemed to rule the hour, “the first thought that flashed through my head when we were so suddenly aroused in the night by all that row, was that the bridge had been dynamited by the German sympathizers, and the guards shot up sky-high with it. Of course, I quickly realized my mistake as soon as I glimpsed that pesky old moose lighting out, with the red embers of our fire scattered among all the dead leaves, and a dozen little blazes starting up like fun.”
“I wonder has any forest fire ever started in that same way?” ventured Tubby.
“If you mean through a crazy bull moose ramming through a bed of hot ashes,” Andy told him, “I don’t believe it ever did. For all we know no moose ever carried out such a queer prank before last night; even if such a thing happened, why the hunters would put the fire out, just as we did.”
“I guess Uncle George would have been tickled to see a big moose at close quarters like that,” said Tubby. “He’s shot one a year for a long while past. He stops at that, because he says they’re getting thinned out up here in Maine, and even over in Canada, too.”
Breakfast over, the boys loitered around for a while. None of them seemed particularly anxious to be on the move, Andy feeling indifferent, Rob because he knew they were not going far that day, and Tubby through an aversion to once more shouldering that heavy pack. In truth, the only gleam of light that came to Tubby he found in the fact that each day they were bound to diminish their supply of food, and thus the burden would grow constantly lighter.
Finally Rob said they had better be making a start.
“Understand, boys,” he told them, with a smile, “we needn’t try for a record to-day. The fact is, I have reason to believe that old deserted logging camp must be somewhere around this very spot. So, instead of striking away toward the west, we’ll put in our time searching for signs to lead us to it. At any minute we may run across something like a trail, or a grown-up tote-road, along which we can make our way until we strike the log buildings where Uncle George said he meant to make his first stop.”
“Oh! thank you for saying that, Rob,” Tubby burst out with, as his face radiated his happy state of mind. “For myself I wouldn’t mind if we just stuck it out here for a whole week, and let Uncle George find us. But then that wouldn’t be doing the right by my father, so we’ll have to keep on hunting.”
“I don’t mean to get much further away from the boundary,” continued Rob, “for what we saw yesterday bothers me. There’s certainly some desperate scheme brooding; that’s as plain as anything to me.”
“Just to think,” said Tubby, looking around him with a trace of timidity on his ruddy face and in his round eyes, “we may be close to a nest of terrible schemers who mean to do something frightfully wicked, and get poor old Uncle Sam in a hole with the Canadian authorities. Rob, supposing this job is pulled off, and those Canadians feel mighty bitter over the breach of neutrality, do you think they’d march right down to Washington and demand satisfaction? I heard you say they had raised a force of three hundred thousand and more drilled men, and that beats our regular army.”
“I guess there’s small chance of such a thing happening, Tubby,” laughed Andy. “You can let your poor timid soul rest easy. In the first place nearly all the three hundred thousand men have already been sent across the ocean to fight the Germans in the French war trenches, or else they are drilling in England. Then again our cousins across the border are far too sensible.”
“Don’t worry about that a minute,” he was told. “What we must keep in mind is that our patriotism may be called on to prevent these men from breaking our friendly relations with our neighbor, that have stood the test of time so well. If only we could find your Uncle George, Tubby, we’d put it up to him what ought to be done.”
“But even if we don’t run across him,” ventured Tubby bravely, “I guess we’re capable as scouts of taking such a job in hand of our own accord; yes, and carrying it through to a successful culmination.”
“Hear! hear!” said Andy, who liked to listen to Tubby when the latter showed signs of going into one of his periodical spasms of “spread-eagleism” as the thin scout was wont to call these flights of oratory.
So the morning passed away, and while they had not covered a great extent of territory by noon, at least the boys had kept up a persistent search for signs that would tell of the presence near by of the abandoned logging camp.
CHAPTER VI
THE LOGGING CAMP
It was along toward the middle of the day when Rob announced welcome news. He called a halt, and as the other pair stood at attention the scout master turned on Tubby with a look that thrilled the stout chum exceedingly.
“What is it, Rob?” he gasped, the perspiration streaming down his fat cheeks in little rivulets, for the day had grown a bit warm after that chilly night. “I know, you’ve run across signs at last?”
“Speak up, Rob, and give us a hint, please,” urged the hardly less impatient Andy.
“I wanted to see if you fellows were using your eyes, first,” explained Rob; “but Tubby seemed to be searching his inward soul for something he had lost; and, well, I imagine Andy here was figuring on what he wanted for his next meal, because neither one of you at this minute has thought it worth while to take a good look down at your feet. Right now you’re standing on the sign!”
They began to cast their eyes earthward. Andy almost immediately burst out with:
“Whee! an old long-disused tote-road, as the lumbermen call the track where the logs are dragged to the rivers, to be later on put behind a boom, and wait for the regular spring rise! Am I correct, Rob?”
“Straight as a die, Andy; this is a tote-road,” replied Rob.
“But what good is that going to do us, I’d like to know?” ventured Tubby, groping as usual for an explanation. “We don’t want to go to any river, that I know of. What we’re itching to find is the logging camp.”
“This track is going to bring us to it, sooner or later,” asserted Rob, with conviction in his tones. “I can give a pretty good guess which way the logs were taken along here, from the signs that are left on the trees and the bushes. Anybody with half a mind could tell that much. Very well, we must follow the track back, and keep watch for another road showing where the horses were daily taken to their sheds at the camp. I imagine it’s going to be a simple enough solution to the puzzle, boys.”
Andy was delighted. Tubby, having been convinced that the leader knew what he was talking about, managed to enthuse. Truth to tell, Tubby was yearning for the delightful minute to arrive when he might toss down that heavy pack of his for good and all, since they expected to go out of the pine woods much lighter than they came in.
They determined to sit down and eat a bite of lunch. After that they would again take up their task, the rainbow of promise glowing in the sky ahead of them.
“Have we gone a great distance away from the border, do you think, Rob?” Andy was asking, while they devoured such food as could be prepared quickly over a small fire.
“Well, that’s something I can’t exactly say yes or no to,” came the answer. “I don’t know where the dividing line comes. According to my reckoning we ought to be about as close as we were last night. In fact, I should say we are now exactly opposite the long bridge over on the Canadian side of the border.”
“But how could that be, Rob, when we’ve been doing considerable walking since breaking camp this morning?” demanded Tubby incredulously,