"I've been ready for a quarter of an hour—just waiting for the skillet to be empty, because I knew you'd never stir so long as there was a crumb left. Where do you put it all?"
"I've got to stow away a lot to balance my brains. I notice you're a light eater," retorted Jerry, but Phil only chuckled.
"All right, you two—be on your merry way," put in Dick Garrett. "This is no picnic excursion you're starting off on. And don't forget your oars, unless you expect to row your boat with your wits."
The two made no reply; a half minute later there were only eight boys in camp.
Something like a quarter of a mile inland was the gravel road that followed the windings of Plum Run, to cut across at the wagon bridge. Two stealthy figures hurried through the woods and across the fields, to emerge on the other side of a barbed wire fence and trudge off down the dusty road.
"Some woodsman, you are!" snorted Phil in purposely exaggerated disgust. "When you skulked through the brush the limbs could be heard popping for a mile. How many times did you fall down?"
"Fall down? What you mean, fall down? Every time you stumbled over your shadow I thought you were ducking for cover, so I simply crouched to keep out of sight."
Phil snorted, and quickened his pace. Jerry put an extra few inches on his own stride and easily kept up. They passed a farmhouse—at good speed, for a dog came out and after a few suspicious sniffs proceeded to satisfy his appetite on Phil's leg. A loud ripping noise told that he at least kept a souvenir of the visit.
The dog's excited barking kept them company to the next farmhouse, which they passed as silently as possible, not particularly desiring to repeat the experience.
"It was your whistling back there that scared up that dog—see if you can whistle a patch onto my leggins," Phil suggested when they were once more surrounded by open fields.