"All right, let's finish this job as soon as possible," Bud proposed, as he started toward a thicket of bushes and small trees a few yards from the landing place.
All being in harmony with this plan, there was a general move toward the interior. The thicket, however, proved to be only about twenty feet in depth, and beyond this was a clear area a quarter of an acre in extent.
"Somebody's had a camp here not many days ago," Cub announced, as he pressed forward eagerly toward the center of the open area.
"Yes, and a tent has stood right here," said Mr. Perry, indicating several guy-rope stakes driven in the ground.
"Whoever it was didn't leave more than a day or two ago," Hal declared.
"See how the grass is tramped down around here?"
"What's this?" exclaimed Bud as he ran back toward the thicket through which they had passed and picked up a pole about ten feet long and two inches thick.
Mr. Perry and the other two boys rushed forward and made an eager examination of Bud's discovery.
"This looks interesting," said Bud significantly as he called attention to several worn places at both ends and the middle of the pole, as if with iron rings or wire held close around it under a strain.
"There's another just like this one over there," cried Hal, suddenly darting forward toward a slender pine tree about a hundred feet away and standing a short distance out from the thicket border of the open area.
Mr. Perry, Cub, and Bud rushed after Hal, who picked up, under the pine tree, a pole almost the exact duplicate of the one found by Bud. After a careful examination of them both, Mr. Perry announced: