AN UNEXPECTED REPROOF.
“Hist, old man!” Dick Bellamy whispered, slipping out of his bunk.
“Something is up, and I can’t make out what it is. Don’t say
anything,—just keep quiet and use your ears.”
Alec, strangely thrilled, listened intently. The sounds Dick had heard,
and which now came to Alec distinctly, consisted of a muffled scraping
outside the side wall of the cabin, at the window. Some one was working
at the catch.
It was long after “taps” and all the other scouts of the Otter and the
Fox patrols were sound asleep in the cabin; that is, all save Alec, who,
being restless because of a troubled conscience, had been startled by
the vision of his friend bending over him in the darkness.
“What d’you think it is?” was Dick’s question.
“Go to sleep again, Dick; it’s nothing,” Alec retorted scornfully. And
the next instant he marred the effect of his own words by asking: “What
on earth do you suppose it can be?”
“A bear, perhaps,—or the mate of Hugh’s bobcat.”
“Nonsense! There are no bears around here, Joe says, and you ought to
know that a bob——”
“Speak lower, Alec. It may be one of those Canuk lumberjacks from the
camp in the back-woods. You remember, Pioneer Camp was robbed last
summer, and there was a row over the affair.”
“You certainly have a lively imagination, Dick! Do you think a thing
like that is going to happen again so soon?”
“Well, why not? You can’t trust any one of those toughs. I heard cook
say so once, and then he shut up like a clam ’cause he thought Joe might
hear him. Joe’s respected father was a Canuk, you know. Someone is up to
some treachery.”
The last word grated upon Alec’s ears. “Treachery?” he repeated. “You
mean——? You accuse—Joe?”
“You were foolish to show off that roll of bills your father sent you to
buy camera supplies with, this afternoon,” was the whispered response.
Alec gave a low laugh.
“What’s eating you, Dick, anyway? You’re twice as foolish to talk that
way. Joe might hear you. Besides, he’s as honest as the daylight. Do you
think the Chief would employ him if——”
“Hark! There’s that noise again. I’ll bet someone is stealing into the
cabin.”
“Why doesn’t he steal in through the door, then?”
“Afraid he’ll make too much noise, I guess. He’d rather take his chance
of coming through a hole in the wall.”
“He’s making more noise than he would by using the door,” said Alec.
“We’ll nail him when he gets inside. If it’s some of the fellows from
the other cabin, Dick, we’ll force them to——Get up, then, and get ready
for business.”
Silently the two lads swung to a sitting posture on the edge of their
bunks, and, with straining eyes, peered through the thick gloom toward
the wall from which the muffled sounds were coming. Suddenly, as they
watched and waited, the lower sash of the window,—which, by the way, was
next to Alec’s bunk,—was raised slowly, and a man’s head and shoulders
appeared against the lighter background of silvery moonbeams. This human
figure silhouetted itself sharply in the opening, evidently not striving
for concealment, and an arm was thrust through. It seemed to be groping
around in the darkness of the log-house, and finally a hand rapped
softly on Alec’s bunk, almost touching his leg.
Alec crawled to the foot of his bed, slipped down, and stepped to Dick’s
side. Dick also rose, and the two moved noiselessly upon the prowler.
The man grunted and breathed hard, while crawling through the window.
Just as he was on the point of tugging at Alec’s pillow, both Alec and
Dick seized him. Like a flash, he turned, without making a sound; it
seemed that he was astounded, for a moment.
Yet his amazement was quite apart from the surprise of the unexpected
seizure. A gurgling laugh sounded in his throat.
“You got me! You th’ boy I want to see,” he chuckled, turning to Alec.
The moonlight fell full upon his swarthy face.
“Joe!” gasped Alec. “What are you doing here at this time of night?”
“Want to see you,” explained the half breed, in a whisper.
“Me? What for? Why didn’t you tell me what you want after we got back
yesterday?” Alec’s nervousness betrayed itself in the tones of his
voice. “You could have spoken to me last evening at the council-fire.
What’s the——?”
“No time then, no time to-morrow.”
“That’s so. I forgot we—the signal corps—are going to Oakvale to-morrow.
The Chief told us last night, Dick, that Major Brookfield invited us to
join his headquarters’ staff of signalers in the maneuvers, and so we’re
going to the National Guard camp for a few days. Major Brookfield was in
Oakvale yesterday, and the Chief saw him there. The major was pleased
with the signal work we did during the fire.”
Dick Bellamy heard only a few words of Alec’s news. He kept his eyes
fixed upon the face of the guide, wondering if by any unlucky chance Joe
had overheard any of the insinuations which he, Dick, had uttered. At
heart Dick was afraid of “Injun Joe,” as he called him—behind his back.
“Want to see you, Alec,” repeated Joe, moving toward the door, which, as
Alec and Dick had forgotten, was locked on the inside. “Come out with
me—out there.”
Something authoritative in his voice and manner made Alec obey without
protest. Unbolting the door as noiselessly as possible in order not to
waken the sleepers, and leaving Dick to crawl back to his bunk, the
Indian and the white boy glided out into the open space between the two
cabins, and stood facing each other in the moonlight.
“Joe find somethin’ to-day,” began the guide, fumbling in the pocket of
his coat.
“Something of mine? Something that belongs to me?”
“No.”
“Why do you give it to me, then?”
“Becos you’re a scout, becos Joe a scout, too!” Joe’s unusually stolid
features relaxed in a grim smile. “You no un’erstan’?”
Clad only in his pajamas, Alec shivered; but not entirely because of the
chill night air on his body. The presence of the man before him, the
vague reproach conveyed in Joe’s softly guttural tones, gave, him a
curious “creepy” sensation of cold and a weakness in the knees.
“What-what is it?” he questioned, extending his hand.
“Here. You take this.”
Joe handed the boy a small, thin, oblong thing that felt damp and gritty
to Alec’s touch.
“What is it? What shall I do with it? Oh, Joe, is it that book of trout
flies you promised to sell me?” asked Alec eagerly.
Joe grunted, and gave his broad shoulders an expressive shrug.
“Wait,” he mumbled; “wait and see.”
Whereupon, with another shrug, he turned and strode rapidly away in the
direction of his tent.
Alec looked down at the object in his hand. In the moonbeams he could
scarcely make out what it was, for it was covered with mud-stains.
Mechanically he opened it and turned what seemed to be pages soiled and
crumpled and badly torn. All at once he uttered a little exclamation of
astonishment.
“Oh!” he breathed. “It’s Hugh Hardin’s note-book!”
* * * * * * * *
When the signal corps reached the camp of the National Guard, late in
the following afternoon,—having made the trip over to the Oakvale
meadows on foot as far as Rainbow Lake, and thence in Tom Walsh’s farm
wagon,—they were at once taken to Major Brookfield’s quarters and
introduced to that officer. He received them with a genuine cordiality
that straightway won their hearts, and he assigned them to the Blue
Army.
“There is to be a sham battle next Saturday,” he told them, “and the
Blues feel that they will be beaten because they are fighting the
regulars, who compose the majority of the Reds, though they, the Blues,
outnumber their foes. I want you boys to do all you can to save the day.
Who is the leader of this corps, Lieutenant?”
“We have not yet elected a leader, Major Brookfield,” answered Scout
Master Denmead, “owing to the fact that we hadn’t time, before coming
here, to apply the last test which I had decided upon. You see, we left
camp rather hurriedly this morning, in order to be here on time for the
beginning of the maneuvers.”
“I understand. Well, it won’t make any difference, anyway. Perhaps the
work these lads are going to do with us may be counted further toward
some one’s election.”
“That’s an excellent idea.”
“The first ‘job’ you’ll have,” continued the Major, addressing his
attentive listeners, “is to go out ahead with a detachment of Blues and
help lay telegraph wires. I presume most of you are pretty well grounded
in elementary surveying?”
The scouts replied by saluting.
“Well, then, follow my aide here, and he’ll put you in charge of the
captain.”
In orderly array, the eight scouts of the signal corps left headquarters
and were duly presented to the captain in command of the detachment of
Blues. Their work began that very evening, for they were ordered to
proceed from camp and take possession of a high mound east of the
village, a strategic point which the Reds coveted, because it commanded
telegraphic communication with Oakvale.
By the time this mound had been scaled and captured, after a skirmish
with a few Red defenders, the eight new recruits, albeit thrilled by
their first experience of mock warfare, were thoroughly tired. Wrapped
in their blankets, they stretched themselves on the grassy slope of the
mound.
“We’re safe enough here, and we can be comfortable,” said Alec to Walter
Osborne.
“Good fun, this,” was Walter’s sleepy comment. “I’m going to sleep with
one eye open.” He pulled the blanket over him, and yawned. “Forty winks
for me, this night!”
“Forty-four thousand, you mean! I have a life-size picture of you
sleeping with one eye open, after all we’ve been through to-day! Well,
I’m dog-weary. Good night, old scout, and pleasant dreams.”
“Same to you, Alec.”
“You fellows shut up and go to sleep!” came Cooper Fennimore’s voice:
out of the darkness. “Hi, there, Arthur! Quit punching me in the ribs!”
“Never touched you,” protested Arthur, in a drowsy drawl.
“Hugh, why so silent?” demanded Sam.
“Hugh is studying astronomy, fellows,” Blake Merton declared.
“No, I’m not,” said Hugh. “I was just thinking that ’way off in Pioneer
Camp ‘taps’ is sounding now, and Billy the Wolf is wishing he were here
with us. Good old Billy! Hope he wasn’t _very_ much disappointed about
not making the corps.”
It was characteristic of Hugh Hardin to wish that his chum might share
adventures and good-fortune with him.
Suddenly, across Alec’s drowsy consciousness stole a slight jealousy of
Billy Worth. Never had he felt this before; never had he wished that he
and Hugh might be friends with no indifference on Hugh’s part toward
him, and no hostility on his own. Surely if Billy Worth, whom Alec
really liked, found Hugh worthy of respect and regard, Hugh must be a
friend worth claiming. Yet what had he done to make of Hugh a friend?
Nothing. On the contrary, he had been guilty of a mean and selfish act
which, if Hugh suspected it, could not easily be forgiven.
“A scout is friendly. He is a friend to all and a brother to every other
scout.”
So ran the fourth law which Alec had promised to obey when he took the
scout oath. And how had he kept that law? By treachery to another!
“Guess I must be tireder than I thought,” he told himself, trying to
account for these disturbing reflections. “If I want to, I can return
Hugh’s notes to him when we go back to camp; they’re hidden in my locker
now. I suppose Joe meant that it was up to me to return them. Why didn’t
he do it himself? It would be more like him, the sly dog! I wish he had!
I don’t want to return them; they’re so much better than mine. Oh, well,
perhaps——“
But here his brain and body seemed to yield all at once to the
overpowering spell of tired youth, and he sank into dreamless slumber.