“We’ll have to glide into some gentle dell in the bosom of a friendly hill!” laughed Harry, “and send a scout out to watch those fellows spy upon the camp.”
“If they’ve got a detachment of half-breeds guarding every squad of Boy Scouts that have strayed away from the camp today,” Jack laughed, “they must have an army in here. Ned was coaxed away by a fake note; Jimmie went to find Ned and got lost himself, and we go out to answer a call for help and get mixed up with a lot of half-breeds. I guess we’ll have to take a company of state troops with us next time we go camping.”
“Well, let’s be moving,” urged Frank. “Those fellows’ heads will be just sore enough when they quit rolling to shoot at anything in sight. They’d string us up if they caught us now.”
In accordance with this reasoning, the boys turned south in the thicket then shifted to the east, then whirled back in a northerly direction. At one time they heard the shouts of the half-breeds on the slope far away to the south.
“They think we kept right on south,” laughed Jack. “Now,” he went on, “we’ll walk north a long ways, climb the slope to the snow line, and come out on the camp from above. How’s that strike you boys?”
“It listens good to me,” Frank answered. “Do you suppose Ned is back there yet?” he continued.
“It struck me,” Jack replied, “that the half-breeds we encountered were out looking for Ned or Jimmie.”
“You’ll have to guess again,” Harry put in. “The ginks we encountered were stationed there to catch any Boy Scout who came in answer to that signal. That’s some more of the work of that crooked messenger.”
“Well, I hope the bears won’t devour Gilroy while we’re gone,” Frank suggested. “It’s likely to be night before we get back.”
The boys walked for a long distance, and it was three o’clock by their watches when they turned up the slope. They would have felt less comfortable during the latter part of their journey if they had known that they were passing within a few hundred yards of the headquarters of the outlaws at the old mission.