THE TRACKING EXPEDITION
A week had passed. Saturday had come, and the Cup was not yet found.
It had been, perhaps, the most sobering week that Betty had ever
spent in her life. For, after the meeting with Sybil in the school
wood, she had taken the head girl’s words to heart and had tried to
go about everyday things as quietly and evenly as she could and in an
everyday manner. The other juniors might look at her curiously now
and again as though wondering whether Betty had forgotten. But she
had not. At almost every moment of the day she remembered that her
helter-skelter ways and lack of control had more than probably been
the cause of the loss of the Cup. But she was “trying not to fuss,”
for she had learned a lesson which she would never forget, and she
had formulated, too, in the wood the preceding evening, a principle
that she would never lose sight of through all her schooldays to
come. She meant to work on and on, “hastening slowly” until some day
she saw herself, like Sybil, helping some smaller Guide than herself
to higher courage and greater endeavour. She would never forget
Sybil’s words to her in the wood: they went to hold a place--though
the head girl certainly did not guess it--among the “secret beautiful
things” in Betty’s heart which might never be spoken about to any one
at all.
Not that, after that evening, Betty had come much into contact with
the head girl. She had barely met Sybil again that week at all.
Only at meal-times in the distance, and during the head girl’s duty
hours as prefect, did the two meet. And to all outward appearances
Betty’s life went on just as before the loss of the Cup; for though
naturally its loss was the chief subject of every conversation,
nobody connected her name with the loss, nor suggested by look or
word that there might be any such connection. It was not until after
some days had passed that she herself dared to broach the subject,
which was always uppermost in her mind, to Gerry, her friend.
“Gerry, do they think some one saw me cleaning it, and then stole it?”
Gerry nodded. “Well, it does seem like that. All the girls have
talked it over. It couldn’t very well have gone any other way. Rene
suggested a jackdaw, but that’s silly, of course, for the Cup is too
heavy. But it could easily have been lifted down from the shelf by
any one who climbed in from the wood. And if any one saw you sitting
there and cleaning it, and then saw you put it back--” Gerry stopped
and looked awkward.
“But--” Betty spoke humbly--“but oh, I know, of course, that I should
have asked permission, and that I didn’t. But, Gerry, nobody ever
trespasses in the school wood. What should bring them there just
that one day? Nobody would dare to because of Witch’s Wood being so
near. So it does seem strange.”
“I know.” Gerry nodded agreement. “Miss Carey told the police,
though, and some of them looked in the wood. There were traces, I
heard Doron say, as though some one had been there. ‘Sign,’ you
know. And they think that a tramp must have been resting there, and
probably that he was a stranger and didn’t know the silly stories
about Witch’s Wood. It couldn’t possibly be a villager, for none of
them would dare to.”
“It does seem like that,” sighed Betty.
There was nothing for it after that but just to “keep on keeping on,”
and to keep on hoping against hope too, though the chances of the
Cup’s return seemed now very slight. With the near approach of
Saturday, however, the spirits of the dormitory juniors rose.
“It’s terribly appropriate just to be happening to have a tracking
expedition,” remarked Mona. “Suppose--just suppose we found the Cup!”
“Hidden in a hole by a tramp, d’you mean?” suggested Rene.
“Yes; or something like that. Wouldn’t it be simply glorious to
bring the tramp to justice! Just like a book. We might get a Guide
medal from headquarters, I should think.”
“You wouldn’t. It sounds terribly un-Guidy to say that it’s glorious
to put tramps into prison,” put in Gerry. She turned to Betty for
support.
“You mean friends of all the world?” said Betty shyly. “Yes, I think
so too.”
“Well, I must say!” Mona flared up at once. “All I can tell you is,
then--and Rene thinks the same--that we two would do anything for the
sake of the patrol and for Sybil and everything. We’d do _anything_
to get the Cup back. And if Betty, of all people----”
“You know perfectly well that Betty’s as keen to get it back as you
are,” flared up Gerry in return.
A grim silence fell on the cubicles. Brushes could be heard in
vigorous use from the four corners of the room.
Matters were still rather strained and the subject was a chilly one
between the couples next day. Sybil, however, who with Eve--her
second--and Doris, Jean and Lilian, the older Guides of the patrol,
was to head the expedition, was certainly in no mood to notice petty
trifles such as Tenderfoot feuds. The patrol was marched out in
business-like fashion on to the moor, and the practice began.
Vigorous, practical, and to the point, was the scheme of the
afternoon’s work. The Tenderfoots were taken in hand first by the
captain herself, and received a preliminary lesson in stalking and
sign-reading.
“Red Indians are wonders,” said Sybil; “there are no tracking secrets
hidden from them. They will lie in wait for hours; and the crumpling
of a leaf or the shade of difference in a sound means everything to
them sometimes. Their food depends on their scouting, you see, and
their family’s food. They learn ‘stalking’ because they would die if
they did not understand how to stalk. In our country, too, keepers
and others look for ‘sign’ from morning till night. In the war,
you’ll remember, scouting played a tremendous part.”
“I say, Sybil, gipsies leave ‘sign’ behind,” put in Mona, as they all
squatted on the grass.
“Yes, they do. _Patrin_, they call it. And the gipsies can follow
each other just because of it. It helps them more than we’d
understand, I expect, since they are roaming all the time. I’ve seen
broom-making gipsies sitting on the backs of their caravans and
throwing down sometimes a bundle of twigs, and marking their road
along from one town to another in that way. A regular trail is left
behind; but only just plainly enough trailed, of course, for a
watchful person to see.”
“The ones that camp on the moor here make baskets, you know,” put in
Mona.
“Well, we are going to do something in the _patrin_ line this
afternoon,” put in Sybil. “It’s much the same thing. You must all
learn by following some definite clues, for we don’t want one of you,
even a mascot, to get lost in a wood again. Eve and Lilian are going
to lay down ‘sign,’ or _patrin_, or whatever you like to call it, and
you four are to follow the scent. They have started already and are
laying trail, and you must try to follow on, after they have had a
fair start, and track them. Try to track the way they went by
noticing any scraps of ‘sign’ they may leave; not only over the next
two ridges of the moor, but all the way, try to keep exactly on their
trail. It is a very simple test, and you may have an hour for it.
Then come back here and bring reports. Afterwards, Eve will go over
the ground with you and tell you what you have missed and where you
went wrong. Remember to ‘hasten slowly’; you will miss a lot,
possibly, by hurrying.”
The four started off.
It was glorious. The sun blazed down from overhead; the grass was
baking underfoot. Betty’s eyes were wide with eagerness as she and
Gerry made their way off together. Eve was even now returning behind
the second ridge: and they were to bring back an account of every bit
of “sign” she had left _en route_. The first “scent” was a
footprint, imbedded deeply, and evidently on purpose, in a piece of
upturned turf. Gerry, Mona, and Rene discovered it in chorus.
“Pointing east. She’s gone that way. Is it Eve’s or Lilian’s?”
“Lilian is wearing tackets in her boots and Eve isn’t, I noticed.
The footprint must be Eve’s.”
On they went.
There followed, with a yard or two between, more and more traces of
“sign”--a tiny bit of paper crumpled up, which proved to be half of
an envelope addressed to Lilian; a tiny scrap of patrol ribbon; more
footprints; a lock of Eve’s hair!
On and on went the practice. Suddenly, just as the top of the second
ridge was reached, Mona, who was a pace ahead, gave a little shout.
“Rene, I say.”
“What is it?” called Gerry.
But the others were whispering eagerly. They were bending down and
didn’t answer.
“It’s a _patrin_. It must be a real one. A bundle of sticks
pointing this way,” said Mona at last. “Rene says she is sure she
saw more of it farther back, but she thought it was some of Eve’s
‘sign.’ Well, _this_ can’t be, I’m certain. It must be the _patrin_
of some gipsies on the moor.”
Gerry and Betty hung eagerly over the “sign.”
There was no doubt of it. A little bundle of rushes still fresh and
green lay there.
“And close to the moor path,” shouted Mona. “It was flung here from
a passing caravan. There are marks of the wheels too, and the
horse’s feet.”
“I say,” Gerry called after them, “you’re leaving the ridge.”
But the excitement was by this time intense. Mona and Rene were wild
with eagerness.
“We’ll have to. We’re going to follow. Suppose they’ve got the Cup!
Sybil said to come back in an hour, and it’s not half an hour yet.
If you’ll come along we can all go together, and be back by the time
the others do. If we run back to ask leave, she’ll probably not be
there; and we shall never catch up with the caravan.”
“But what are you going to do? And why should they have the Cup?”
demanded Gerry. “And besides, it’s a practice; and we’ve got Eve’s
‘sign’ to follow.”
“‘_Why?_’ It’s more than likely that they’ve got it,” almost stamped
Mona. “And if you don’t care about the Cup, Rene and I _do_! I must
say, after last night, any one would think that you two----”
Mona was off.
“I’m not going,” said Gerry, sitting down on the ridge. “Betty,
you’re not to either. We might go back to Sybil and ask; but she’s
given us the orders, and----”
The couples parted company.
But there was little enjoyment in searching after “sign” when Mona
and Rene had gone. The others heard several shouts of excitement as
two more bunches of the _patrin_ were picked up; then the adventurous
pair disappeared from view.
“I’m perfectly sure,” said Gerry, after almost half an hour more had
gone, as she and Betty were just preparing to slip over the ridge,
“that they ought not to have gone. But----”
They had been seated for a while on the topmost ridge, counting up
their “sign” discoveries in preparation for their return. It was
just as they had finished that they heard the sound of a step behind
them.
“Oh, you’s the other two young ladies, is yer?” said a voice. Betty
and Gerry turned. “Well, an’ I’ll trouble you to come along.”
As they stared with amazement their gaze fell upon a gipsy boy, who
stood there, tall and handsome, but with an insolent lowering look
upon his face.