"Why, how do you do, Brother Fox?" Elmer chattered, amusing himself by this manner of monologue, just as though the animal might be within sound of his voice. "You were also abroad during the night, I see, and carrying home some sort of game in the bargain, for the little foxes in the den, judging from the scratches alongside your own tracks. Let's see if I can find out what it was you managed to grab."
He followed the trail fully fifty yards before making any discovery. Then the observant boy triumphantly snatched something up from the ground.
"A fine, fat young partridge, I wager, you caught, old lady," he chuckled, as he twirled the feather between forefinger and thumb, and then stuck it in the band of his campaign hat. "Well, it was a sorry night for the poor bird; but those little foxes just had to have something to devour ever so often. Now, I'd like to find out whether this was a red fox; one of those dandy blacks like we took out of the trap when we were up at Uncle Caleb's woods cabin;[A] or a gray rascal. I'll see if I can settle that part of it and satisfy my curiosity."
It did not take long for a boy of such wide experience as Elmer to find a clue on which to build his theory. Inside of three minutes he came to a place where the returning four-footed hunter had to pass through close quarters, in pushing under some brush. Elmer knew just where to look, and was speedily laughing as he held up several hairs he had found caught on a thorn.
"As red as any fox that ever crept up on a sleeping partridge, and snatched her from her nest in the thicket!" Elmer declared, also placing the evidence away, for he would want to show it to the tenderfoot squad, when telling the simple story of the wonderful things he had come across while just taking a little ramble through the woods.
And so it went on. One thing followed another in endless procession. The red-headed woodpecker tapping the rotten top of a tree; the bluejay hunting worms or seeds amidst the dead grass; the chipmunk that switched around to the other side of a stump and then with sharp eyes watched the two-legged intruder on its haunts curiously; the harmless garter-snake that glided from under his foot, though giving him a certain thrill as he remembered the stories about these deadly rattlers—all these, and many other things arrested the attention of the boy who long ago had become possessed of the magical key that unlocks the storehouse of knowledge in Nature's own kingdom.
And yet Elmer did not forget to always pay attention to the course he was taking. He placed numerous landmarks down in his memory, so that he would know them again later on. Now it might be an odd freak in the way of a bent-over tree, that had the appearance of a drawn bow, with some unseen giant of the woods standing back of it, drawing the cord taut; then again a cluster of white birches would be impressed on his mind, to be readily recognized again in case the necessity arose.
All this time he was heading in a direct line toward that region where the blue spiral of smoke had been noticed in the still morning air. Elmer, too, fancied, when an hour had passed, that he must by now be drawing well along toward the origin of the smoke column.
Possibly he may have questioned whether he was exactly wise in thinking of invading the precincts of the camp, that might prove to be the home of the man who possessed the evil reputation.
"But my motives are all right," Elmer told himself, when this arose to annoy him; "and I mean no harm to Jem or his people, if so be he has any family, which somehow no one ever bothered to tell me, even if they knew. I guess Jem's been something of a mystery to the people up here. He seems to have no friends, and it may be nobody ever did penetrate to his camp. Well, then, I'll be the pioneer in the game. I'm not afraid of Jem, for all his black looks. I'd just like to get to know him, and find out if he's as tough as they say."