"Oh! there are plenty such cropping up from time to time, I reckon," he remarked, scornfully; "but they seldom amount to a row of beans. You thought this little chap was some punkins just because you happened to hear him amidst peculiar surroundings. Now, the chances are when you listen to him in a concert hall you'll be bitterly disappointed in his genius, as you like to call it."
"You're jumping at conclusions too fast, as usual, George," the scout leader told the objector. "In the first place, Conrad will never be heard on the concert stage while he is as green as he is along the lines of musical culture. He will show what is in him to genuine critics, and then if they prove as wild over him as I believe they are bound to be, he'll be put under the charge of the best teacher in New York City, to begin along the proper lines."
As George was so busily employed, and Elmer had nothing else to do, he started getting lunch ready later on. There was an abundance of material to choose from, and it was really a pleasure to make the selection. So presently savory odors began to arise in the vicinity, that, when wafted to the olfactories of the three boys coming wearily back over their morning trail would be sure to hasten their footsteps.
It was easy to see that Rufus had made more or less progress along the lines of carrying out his plans for checking up the previous survey.
"Of course it's a whole lot too soon," he told Elmer, when he came into camp and threw himself down to rest, "to say that the job was pretty much of a bungle; but I'm beginning to believe that same. And before two suns have set I'll have the figures to prove it, too."
"What object do you suppose those civil engineers could have had in rushing it all through, and doing a rotten job in the bargain?" demanded George. "Could it be possible there was some crooked work back of the survey, and that they took a money bribe to falsify the figures? In other words, has your respected dad been stung when buying some square miles of ground up here along Raccoon Bluff?"
"Oh! I'm hardly prepared to go as far as that," said Rufus, hastily. "I'd be more inclined to believe that the men who came up here just slouched at their work and failed to do what they should. They made a slash three-quarters of the way back in one place, we found, and then probably guessed the rest. It's going to turn out a bad piece of work, and they'll hear from my dad, you can wager. The Snodgrass pluck and vim won't stand for such monkey shines one minute, as any person who knows my father can tell you."
Elmer suddenly remembered how the lad with the flaxen hair had said that his father, Jem Shock, seemed to cherish a singular antipathy toward some one by the name of Snodgrass; and that ever since meeting them on the road, he had kept repeating it to himself, and frowning as though furious. He wondered again whether that rich father of Rufus could at some time in the past have wronged the same Jem in a real estate deal. It would be very unfortunate if such proved to be the case; and might spoil some of the plans he, Elmer, had been building up, connected with the wonderful boy musician.
Later on, while they were discussing the lunch, he started in and told Lil Artha, Rufus and Alec what he had run across. All of them were greatly interested; but the scout-master, for reasons of his own, failed to mention that the man who was called a "poacher," and who had somehow gained the name of a bad man, seemed to hold hard feelings against a Snodgrass.
Rufus was loud in his desire to help the "cause" along.