CHAPTER VII.
IN HOT PURSUIT.
Toby and Nat stared, first at Elmer, and then at each other. Plainly they could not understand what he meant by these strange words.
"Er—d'ye mean you forget just where you left it, Elmer?" asked Toby.
"I tell you it's gone, vanished completely, disappeared!" said the scout leader, with a show of anger in his usually steady voice.
"Great goodness, Nat, he means somebody's swiped it!" ejaculated Toby, his mouth opening in his astonishment.
Nat looked all around him, and then, not seeing a single trace of the fine motorcycle, he began "barking," as Toby called it, after his own peculiar way.
"Gee, whiz, now what d'ye think of that for a hummer! The old story over again of the traveler on the highway falling among thieves. My stars, Elmer, now who under the sun do you think would be so mean as to run off with your machine!"
"I don't know—yet; but I'm going to find out," replied Elmer, setting his teeth in a way he had when greatly aroused.
They saw him bend down again, and start to examine the ground near a tree, against which he evidently had leaned the motorcycle at the time he hurried to the rescue of his comrades in distress.