"Well, that beats the Dutch!" he cried with genuine disgust. "The two of us felt so dead sure we knew it all, that nothing would do for us but to come away up here five miles or so from home, just to show everybody that we could take care of ourselves. And now you deliberately tell me we've gone and got lost, like the poor little babes in the woods, and with a terrible storm going to pounce down on us right away."
"Oh! brace up, Jasper!" exclaimed Larry, seeing the lower lip of his comrade quivering, and his face showing signs of becoming pallid. "This may be the making of us as scouts, you see. No fellow's worth beans until he's proved that he can take the rough jolts as well as the smooth things of life. Just put your teeth together, and say you're going to grin and bear it, no matter what comes."
"Ain't I trying to, Larry," pleaded the smaller chap, "but it seems like my teeth keep on rattling all the while. I'm shivering, and yet it can't be with the cold. I wish I had some of Elmer Chenowith's nerve just now."
"Shucks! I reckon now that you can have your share of nerve, Jasper," declared Larry, impatiently, "if only you make up your mind to take it. Didn't Mr. Garrabrant, our fine scout-master, tell us only the other night that was so? Just shut your teeth hard, and say over and over again that you ain't goin' to let anything feaze you. You'll be surprised at the feeling it gives you."
"I wonder now, did Elmer really mean to keep tabs on what we were doing?" remarked Jasper, after another tremendous peal of thunder had seemed to almost split the heavens open. "You know, we thought he looked at us kind of funny when he asked us what we meant to do this morning, hiking out of Hickory Ridge, with our sticks in our hands and some grub in our haversacks."
"Oh! I don't think Elmer would bother following all this way," replied Larry, though at the same time he might have been seen to cast an anxious, eager glance around, as though indulging in a faint hope himself that something of the sort had happened.
"Well, he's the best fellow ever, you know, Larry," the smaller boy went on, "and he's sure taken a heap of interest in my trying to make a man of myself. He even took the trouble to come and see me twice, and go over a lot of things with me that he said a true scout ought to know."
"Sure Elmer is worth his weight in gold," Larry affirmed. "And now's the time to show him his faith in you wasn't wasted, Jasper. Buck up, and just make up your mind neither of us happens to be made of salt, so a little juice ain't going to hurt us. As for that lightning, well, perhaps we might find some hole to climb in, because it wouldn't hunt us out underground."
"Oh! if we only could!" gasped Jasper, as another flash came that fairly dazzled both boys; to be succeeded by a sudden report that sounded as though something had exploded near by.
"Listen! what's that?" demanded the smaller boy, again clutching his comrade by the sleeve.