“There they go,” he shouted as he realized that the naked Carrots and Connie in his pajamas were lunging across the narrow creek. Colly followed Art but they were too late. As Connie, slowed up by his clinging night garments, reached the shallow water, Carrots, the stolen pennant in his grasp, had been joined by his two companions and all were off on a dead run over the gravel and sand.
“They got to get their clothes,” yelled Connie. “Come on! We’ll see who the other kids are.”
But the feet of the Boy Scouts were not as indifferent to the jagged stones as were those of the Goosetowners. The open shore of the other bank of the stream ran west a few hundred feet, skirting the clay bluff, and then broadened out into a “bottom.”
“They went this way,” yelled Connie. “They got their clothes back there in the willows.”
It was not an inviting looking place. As the bluff dropped down to the low ground, sand covered with driftwood and overgrown by willows, it gave way to a dark pathless “bottom”—the driftwood standing like skeletons in the half luminous night. To add to the embarrassment of the pursuers a wire fence, tangled into a rope of sharp spikes, lay among the water weeds and drifted sand.
“Look out for that old wire fence,” called Art in reply, his soaked shoes squirting water and his clinging pants rasping like a file as he stumbled after Connie. His advice came too late. The excited patrol leader had seen the shadows of the flying marauders pass into the willow waste and he plunged ahead in the same direction. Then his wet and dragging trousers caught in a half buried fence-wire barb and Connie shoved his head into the wet sand.
When he was again on his feet, Art and Colly had joined him, and more yelling scouts were swimming the creek. The breathless Connie was not injured. With another shout that the fugitives would have to stop somewhere to dress, he sprang ahead again into the black jungle of river willows. In the midnight shadows the three boys were instantly lost. They were not only lost as an expedition but, a little later, they were lost from each other. Colly, forcing himself through the tangle in one direction, soon found himself, scratched and bleeding, again on the shore of the creek, completely turned around. The reënforcements attempted to proceed no farther than the edge of the willow swamp. Far in its depths Art could be heard calling, and guiding calls were sounded in return. He had stumbled upon a little opening where a shallow bayou was margined with swamp grass and deep-voiced frogs. In the glint of the moon he had seen a moving eddy in the pool and the thought of a snake sent him lunging once more into the thicket.
Connie had disappeared without further sound or signal. Five minutes later, from a point east of the swamp, came a low, familiar call—the cry of the Wolf. Before the excited scouts behind him could organize an advance in that direction, the call was heard again, this time down near the big bluff. Like sore-hoofed and drenched sheep the water-soaked, and now shivering scouts made their way as rapidly as they could in that direction. They were in time to see their leader sliding down the clay bluff to the creek bank. His face was smeared with swamp soil, the trousers of his pajamas he carried in his arms and his legs were scratched and bloody.
“Well,” he shouted as he got his breath, “they’ve done the business! They got the flag and they got our horse an’ wagon! They was six of ’em!”