“Count me in too,” added Sim Jeffreys. “I feel pretty sick of the whole business, and we can’t get back home any too soon to suit me.”
“Same here,” muttered Bud Phillips, who had kept looking at Paul for some time in a furtive way, as though he had something on his mind that he was strongly tempted to communicate to the scout leader.
“So you see that settles it,” grinned Hank. “Even if I wanted to hang out here all the rest o’ the holidays, three agin one is most too much. We’d be havin’ all sorts o’ rows every day. Yep, we’ll start fur home the fust chance we git.”
That pleased Paul, and was what he had hoped to hear.
“Of course,” he went on to say to Hank, “it’s a whole lot shorter cutting across country to Stanhope than going around by way of Lake Tokala 198 and the old canal that leads from the Radway into the Bushkill river; but you want to be mighty careful of your compass points, or you might get lost.”
“Sure thing, Paul,” remarked the other, confidently; “but that’s my long suit, you ought to know. Never yet did git lost, an’ I reckon I ain’t a-goin’ to do it now. I’ll lay it all out and make the riffle, don’t you worry about that same.”
“We came over that way, you know,” interrupted Jud Mabley, “and left blazes on the trees in places where we thought we might take the wrong trail goin’ back.”
“That was a wise thing to do,” said Paul, “and shows that some of you ought to be in the scout movement, for you’ve got it in you to make good.”
“Tried it once you ’member, Paul, but your crowd didn’t want anything to do wi’ me, so I cut it out,” grumbled Jud, though he could not help looking pleased at being complimented on the woodcraft of their crowd by such an authority as the scout-master.
Paul turned from Jud and looked straight into the face of the leader.