"We must be at least four up-hill miles from camp," Jack calculated.
"All of that," answered Ned. "It is a long walk there and back."
"Then why not remain here?" asked Jack. "I'm hungry, but I'm more in need of rest than food just now. We can lie here in the thicket until night, and then creep up the slope and see what's doing."
"I was about to suggest that," Ned observed, "but I thought you'd be ravenous for the sight of a camp dinner!"
"I have a hunch," Jack declared, after a time, "that Jimmie is somewhere in this section! I don't know why, but when I saw those men, strangers, evidently, walking so stealthily over the country I got the hunch! Then I followed them, because I thought I might get a clue to the boy's whereabouts by so doing."
"If the boy is here," Ned replied, grimly, "we'll find him!"
"Of course we'll find him! That's what we are here for!"
The boys thus encouraging each other crawled deeper into the thicket and lay down. They were more than tired, worse than hungry, but they never thought of sleep, or of leaving their post of observation. The afternoon passed slowly, the boys taking snapshots now and then.
"The boys will be thinking we've been geezled!" Jack said. "I wish they knew where to find us. There's no knowing what they will do, they're so anxious about Jimmie. And if they scatter over the country others may be captured."
"They usually show good sense in emergencies," Ned commented.