A hundred yards from shore he hazarded a backward glance, and saw the
wind sweeping across the bay, a line of turbulent tossing spray.
(Page 60) Frontispiece.
BOY SCOUTS
ON THE TRAIL
BY
JOHN GARTH
_PUBLISHED WITH THE APPROVAL OF
THE BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA_
PUBLISHERS
BARSE & CO.
NEW YORK, N. Y. NEWARK, N. J.
Copyright, 1920
by
BARSE & CO.
_Printed in the United States of America_
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I The Camp on Long Point 9
II Forbidden Fruit 17
III The Shark 26
IV The Man in the Dory 33
V Perplexed 44
VI Loon Island 50
VII The Lightning Flash 57
VIII The Plot 64
IX Through Storm and Darkness 71
X His Bit 77
XI The Last Night 86
XII “What is Scouting For?” 94
XIII The Tallerico Kid 101
XIV Quick Wit and Courage 110
XV The Scout Rally 119
XVI Roughneck Garrity 127
XVII Learning to Box 135
XVIII The Boy Who Couldn’t Swim 141
XIX A Score is Paid 147
XX The Haunted Cabin 155
XXI The Log Cabin Fund 165
XXII The Appeal 173
XXIII Good Turns Like Chickens 180
XXIV The Face in the Window 186
XXV The Man with No Hair 193
XXVI The Hidden Wireless 201
XXVII Micky Disappears 207
XXVIII To the Rescue 213
XXIX Escape 221
XXX The Lonely Soldier 230
XXXI The Parting of the Ways 241
BOY SCOUTS
ON THE TRAIL
CHAPTER I
THE CAMP ON LONG POINT
Stout Harry Ritter gave a sudden chortle of glee and looked up from the
copy of the “Long Point Snort” he was languidly perusing in the shade of
some cedars behind Tent Four.
“Say, fellows, have you seen this stuff about Bull Taggart?” he demanded
joyously.
“How could we when you hog the paper the minute it comes out?” inquired
Ted Hinckley sarcastically. He had sent in a poem the day before and for
ten minutes or so had been waiting with ill-concealed impatience to see
whether it had found favor with the editors. “Well, what is it?” he went
on impatiently. “Why don’t you get it off your chest? What kind of bull
has he been throwing now?”
“He’s been chased by a shark,” chuckled Ritter fatly. “Monster fifteen
feet long pursued his boat for over a mile out in the Sound. Tried to
upset him by bumping its nose against the keel. This is rich! Four rows
of teeth sharp as razors.... Gleaming white belly—stomach would have
been more refined, seems to me. Remember Dolly Wade, who called ’em
blue-_stomach_ crabs. Where was I? Um-um. Oh, yes. Monstrous dorsal fin
cutting the water like a knife. Gee-whiz! Bull will kill me dead one of
these days. I s’pose he’s training to be an author when he grows up. You
can have it, Ted; I’m through.”
He tossed the sheet lazily to Hinckley and lounged indolently against
the trunk of the cedar.
“Does he pretend he really saw it?” asked Steve Haddon, linking brown,
muscular fingers about an equally brown knee; “or is it meant to be
just—er—fiction?”
“Oh, he saw it, of course,” said Ritter with a giggle. “No fiction about
that. Recognized it as a regular man-eater, too, by something or other
about its expression, didn’t he, Ted?”
“Eh?” Hinckley started guiltily and hurriedly shifted his gloating eyes
from the five-line verse which, even in crude mimeograph, thrilled him
with the pride of authorship. “What’s that? Oh! Why, sure! It—its teeth,
it was.”
“Showed ’em in a glistening smile, I s’pose,” chuckled Ritter. “I
shouldn’t think any self-respecting shark would lick his chops over Bull
Taggart. Even served up on toast, he wouldn’t make a good, respectable
bite.”
There was a responsive chuckle from the half-dozen fellows lounging in
the shade; then Haddon glanced questioningly at the tall,
striking-looking chap whose handsome head lay pillowed on Billy
McBride’s knee, while his well-knit body stretched out comfortably on
the sand.
“There aren’t any—man-eating sharks as far north as this, are there,
Cavvy?” he asked.
“Of course not. I should think you’d know better than that.” Jim
Cavanaugh’s tone was positive and a little impatient. “They’re only
found in the south. The sharks around here are nothing but big dogfish;
I don’t believe Bull even saw one of those. He’s the most unmitigated—
Well, Midget, what’s your trouble? Don’t you know any better than to
come in without knocking?”
An exceedingly small boy with snapping blue eyes, a shock of sunburned
hair and an amazing self-possession of manner, darted around the tent
and paused in their midst, somewhat heated with his haste.
“Trouble?” he repeated, scowling. “There’s plenty of trouble, let me
tell you. What do you know about their cutting us out of the Sound and
making us swim in the _kid’s place_?”
“Wa—hat!” came in an incredulous chorus; and then: “Cut out the fancy
touches, Midge. You’ll be as bad as Bull Taggart if you’re not careful.”
“Fancy touches!” snorted the infant with cold scorn. “That’s what you
think, is it? Huh! Well, it’s up on the bulletin board in black and
white. ‘Until further notice all swimming will be restricted to the
north side of the point,’ and signed J. P. Wendell as big as life.
That’s the kid’s place, ain’t it? And because why? It’s that nut Taggart
shooting off a lot of bull about seeing a shark in the sound.
He—makes—me—sick!”
If it was his purpose to stir up the group so comfortably taking their
ease in the heat of early afternoon, Midge Willett was entirely
successful. With one accord six boys sat up abruptly, their faces
expressing varying degrees of surprise, incredulity and indignation. And
for a space the air resounded with shrill question, heated comment and
fragments of argument which satisfied even the small Willett’s
inordinate fondness for attention.
“It’s true, all right,” he declared, spreading his feet apart and
rocking back and forth on his heels. “The stuff’s all in the _Snort_;
you must have seen it.”
“So we have, Shrimp,” admitted Cavanaugh. “We’ve also seen yarns of his
before. You don’t mean to tell us that Mr. Wendell takes any stock in
it?”
“That’s what Marshall says. He heard ’em talking in Headquarters tent.
Bull sticks to it that it’s true. He says he really saw a shark and that
it bumped into his boat.”
“What if it did?” demanded Cavanaugh, irritably; “though I don’t believe
it for a minute. Why, the sharks up north here are as harmless as
kittens. They’d no more tackle a man than—than one of those stupid
blow-fish.”
“Well, the chief don’t seem to think so. Bob says he didn’t know whether
to believe Bull or not, but he and Mr. Cartwright talked it over and
decided to cut out swimming in the Sound till they find out something
for sure. And then they stuck up that notice, and now we’ve got to go
into that rotten hole where you can’t dive and it takes half an hour to
wade out to any decent depth. I—I’d rather stay ashore.”
A concerted groan went up in which stout Harry Ritter joined heartily.
Exertion of any sort was distasteful to him, and it made little
difference whether he undertook his languid splashings in the shallows,
or in the wider, more varied waters of the Sound. But he liked to
criticize and seldom lost an opportunity.
As for the others there was some excuse for their annoyance. The scout
camp was located at the base of Long Point, which thrust its sandy nose
diagonally out into the Sound. Off the southern side lay the open water,
wide, deep, and full of interest and variety. Here the older fellows and
proficient swimmers had always gone, while the novices were limited to
the wide, shallow cove on the other side into which the tide had swept
such quantities of sand that for over a hundred feet from shore it was
not more than waist deep.
“Midge is about right,” sniffed Hinckley, as the diminutive Willett
departed to spread his news. “A lot of fun there’ll be wallowing around
over there. Bull ought to have his head punched.”
“The big chump!” exclaimed Cavanaugh bitterly. “He’ll get his if I have
anything to say about it.”
He stood up abruptly and shook off the sand. The khaki shorts and
sleeveless gym shirt he wore showed off his fine figure and
well-developed muscles to uncommon advantage. Even the scowl failed to
detract noticeably from his good looks, which were remarkable—the good
looks of clean-cut features, clear skin, glowing red under the tan, blue
eyes set wide apart, and wavy blond hair.
Haddon watched him for a moment or two in silence, his rough-hewn face
oddly wistful.
“I suppose he—he might have thought it was true,” he said hesitatingly.
“Whatever he saw he might have thought—”
“Oh, gee whiz, Steve!” interrupted Cavanaugh impatiently. “Don’t try to
make excuses for the nut. He just naturally can’t tell the truth. Who’s
coming for a walk? I’m tired of sitting here.”
They all arose briskly, even Ritter bestirring himself. Walking was no
particular pleasure to him, but he rarely declined an invitation from
Jim Cavanaugh.
“We may as well stroll around by the bulletin board and see if Midge got
things straight,” remarked Hinckley as they moved away.
“Nothing to it!” declared Cavanaugh decidedly. “I haven’t seen the
beastly thing, and I’m not going to know anything about it till I have
to. At least we can get one more decent swim before the lid’s clamped
on.”
“You mean you’d go in anyhow?” asked McBride interestedly.
“Why not? There hasn’t been any official announcement. Willett’s no town
crier that we should take everything he says as gospel. If we should
happen to go over on the sound side at three-thirty and went in there as
usual, they couldn’t very well call us down.”
“We’re supposed to undress in the tents and wait for the whistle,”
remarked Champ Ferris doubtfully. “They’ll think it’s sort of funny if—”
“Oh, well, if you’re looking for trouble you’ll find it,” cut in Cavvy
shortly. “You don’t have to come, you know. But if we hang around here
much longer some other busybody is sure to come along and tell us about
the notice. I’m going to start.”