“It was a lucky thing none of us happened to leave our guns here with all the rest of the duffel,” observed Giraffe exultantly, as though it gave him considerable satisfaction to find that he had not been quite as foolish as might have happened.
“He finally got to our stuff,” Allan went on, “and rising to his knees started to pick out what he wanted. I guess he must have been pretty hungry, because grub was what he seemed to be after. Not one of our haversacks is gone, you can see. He took that piece of bacon we fetched from the boat, the packages of crackers, and—yes, the cheese is lost in addition, also a can of corn and the coffee. Fact is, it looks as if we didn’t have much left, outside this package of hominy, and the little tin box of tea you fetched along, Thad!”
Giraffe gave vent to a hollow groan.
“It’s just dreadful, that’s what!” he said, with a gulp, as though receiving the sad news that he had lost his best friend; “just think of grits and tea for our breakfast, and not another thing! The worst is yet to come, though, for we won’t get anything for dinner, you know! Why, I’ll be all skin and bone if things keep on going from bad to worse like that.”
“Bob White won’t think it’s so tough, if he can have his grits,” remarked Allan; “but breakfast to a New England boy stands for ham and eggs, flapjacks with maple syrup, and always coffee and cold pie.”
“Stop stretching out the agony, can’t you?” said Giraffe, holding both hands to his ears as though trying to shut out the mention of such delightful dishes; “it’s cruelty to animals to talk that way, Allan. But, Thad, what are we going to do about this same thing? Can’t we take up the trail, and try to get our stuff back? After all, this old island is only of a certain size, and with eight of us in line we ought to comb it from top to bottom. I feel like Sheridan did when he met the Union troops running away in a panic from Cedar Creek, and yelled out: ‘Turn the other way, boys, turn the other way! We’ll lick ’em out of their boots yet! We’ve just got to get those camps back!’ You see he was thinking of all the good stuff they’d lost with the camps. So are we.”
“Allan, suppose we look to see which way he went off, because it couldn’t have been along the same line as his advance?” suggested the scout master.
He knew considerable about these things himself, but trusted to Allan to learn facts that might even have eluded his observation. Allan had been in Maine and the Adirondacks a portion of his life, and picked up many clever ways from association with the guides that made him invaluable when it came to a question of woodcraft.
“That’s a good idea, Thad,” was what the other said in reply; and already his sharp eyes had begun to look for signs.
These were easily found, for the unseen thief had crawled away in the same fashion as he made his advance, though a bit more clumsily, which was doubtless owing to the fact of his being more heavily laden at the time.