“Yes, that’s what I just had in mind, Paul,” spoke up Bobolink. “Now, you all needn’t begin to grin at me when I say that. I was thinking more about the fellows who may be shivering and hungry, than of our own well-fed crowd.”
“Oh! The Lawsons!” exclaimed Bluff. “That’s a fact. While we’re having such a royal time of it here they may be up against it good and hard.” 174
Perhaps all of the boys had from time to time allowed their thoughts to stray away, and mental pictures of the Lawson crowd suffering from hunger and cold intruded upon their minds. They forgot whatever they chanced to be doing at that moment, and came around Paul.
“In one way it would serve them right if they did get a little rough experience,” observed Spider Sexton, who perhaps had suffered more at the hands of the Stanhope bully and his set than any of the other scouts.
“Oh, that sort of remark hardly becomes you, Spider,” Paul reminded him. “If you remember some of the rules and regulations to which you subscribed when joining the organization you’ll find that scouts have no business to feel bitter toward any one, especially when the fellows they look on as enemies may be suffering.”
“Excuse me, Paul, I guess I spoke without thinking,” said Spider, with due humility. “And to prove it I’m going to suggest that we figure out some way we might be of help to Hank and his lot.”
“That’s more like it, Spider!” the scout-master exclaimed, as though pleased. “None of us fancy those fellows, because so far we’ve failed to make any impression on them. Several times we’ve tried to make an advance, but they jeered at us, and 175 seemed to think it was only fear on our part that made us try to throw a bridge across the chasm separating us. It’s going to be different if, as we half believe, they’re in serious trouble.”
“But Paul, what could we do to help them?” demanded Bluff.
“With this storm raging to beat the band,” added Tom Betts, “it would be as much as our lives were worth to venture out. Why, you can’t see ten feet away; and we’d be going around in a circle until the cold got us in the end.”
“Hold on, fellows, don’t jump at conclusions so fast,” Paul warned them. “I’d be the last one to advise going out into the woods with the storm keeping up. But Tolly Tip told me the snow stopped hours ago. What we see whirling around is only swept by the wind, for it’s as dry as powder you know. And even the wind seems to be dying down now, and is blowing in spasms.”