"I give it up," said Ned.
"After four o'clock in the afternoon is the rule, I believe," answered Tad in response to a nod from the guide.
"Yes, that's right. That is the hour the camp-keeper is supposed to blow his horn to call home the wanderers. We are too far away, of course, to hear the horn. We must be all of twenty miles from camp. We are now five miles from our ponies."
"It strikes me that it is pretty near time for us to be getting to the animals, then," suggested Tad.
"Why?"
"Because it is going to rain and the afternoon is getting late."
Vaughn nodded. He was losing no opportunity to teach the boys the art of woodcraft, and woodcraft, with all its tricks, was what the Pony Rider Boys wanted to learn. They were learning fast, too, though Tad Butler was the most apt pupil of the four. He never forgot a thing that had been told him. His memory, too, was of great service to him in the woods, as had been demonstrated on other occasions in previous trips. Once he had set his eyes on a peculiar tree or a rock or a formation, he never forgot it. A man with a short memory or lack of observation has a hard time in the woods, and usually a searching party has to go out after him in such a country as this where, were a novice to stray ten rods from camp, he might never find his way back without help.
Great drops of rain began to patter down a few minutes after the subject had been mentioned. The party had left their ponies when the way became impassable for horses, and had gone on on foot. Stacy went with them because he did not relish the idea of being left alone in the woods. Otherwise nothing would have induced him to foot it over the hills, through the tangled growth of blackberry and raspberry briars in old burns, stumbling over charred snags, fallen trunks and limbs, until there was scarcely a spot on any of their bodies that was not mauled to tenderness. A mile an hour is fair time through this sort of country.
Cale decided that it was high time to be going. He took a keen look about him, eyed his charges, then turning to Tad said:
"You lead the way."