“It is pretty high for a fact!” Smithy admitted; “I’m somewhat familiar with the river, because I visited here several summers; and I never saw so much water running down between its banks.”
The road they were following, upon drawing near the river, turned sharply to the south. After that the boys knew they must be within reaching distance of the water as long as they kept to that thoroughfare; though of course should they learn, through the tracks they followed, that the hobo wearing the old army coat had taken to a side path they would be compelled to do the same.
Occasionally they came to an isolated house, and once passed through a small hamlet; but made sure to find the trail beyond, showing that Wandering George had safely navigated through the outpost of civilization, and not been locked up. In fact, Thad was of the opinion that the pair of nomads must have circled around the village on general principles. After having been discovered in the act of robbing the farmer’s home bank they may have feared arrest; and while one hid in the thickets the other possibly ventured into the village in order to purchase supplies, principally strong drink at the tavern.
No matter what their tactics may have been, the pair still held to the river road, and that was sufficient for the scouts who followed the trail.
“What do you make of it, Thad?” asked Giraffe, after he had seen the leader and Allan closely examining a pretty fair footprint left by the tramp; “and are we a long ways behind right now?”
“It isn’t an easy thing to say,” he was told, “because we haven’t much to go by, you see, and have to figure it out on general principles; but we’ve concluded that this print is about two hours old; and that the men are taking it fairly easy as tramps walk.”
“Every once in so often they stop, and sit down on a log that looks inviting, as you see they did here,” Allan added, pointing as he spoke. “We figure they must have invested some of the stolen money in whisky at that village tavern, and that every time they stop they indulge themselves in a good swig.”
“Just what they do, Allan!” announced Step Hen, who had been aimlessly prowling around on the border of the road back of the log where the tramps had rested; “see here what I’ve picked up. That flask must have held a full pint, and it’s been drained to the last drop. More where that came from; and chances are before long we may run across our men sprawled out in the bushes in a drunken sleep.”
“Well, as most tramps can soak in any amount of bug juice without showing signs of it,” Giraffe ventured, “you mustn’t count too heavy on that same; though it’d be a bully good thing for us, as we could get back the Judge’s blue overcoat without any row. The question is, ought we to arrest the hoboes on account of what they did up at Bailey’s farm?”
“We won’t cross that river till we come to it, Giraffe,” laughed Thad; but all the same some of the scouts felt positive their leader had his plan of campaign mapped out already, because that was his invariable rule, so as not to be taken unawares.