“Well, we two took the boat, rowed across to this side of the river and up Loaf Creek, the little creek that runs in round the Sugarloaf——”
“Yes, I know; we’re going to explore it some day,” put in Olive excitedly. “Was it in the woods at the head of the creek that he got the poison?”
“Yes, the ground was all sprayed white with it in one place, but Tommy didn’t notice it at first; he’s only been three months a Scout. We had been wandering about the woods—they were pretty thick—after we landed from the boat and didn’t quite know where we were! Tommy walked on ahead o’ me while I was trying to take our bearings; he had been eating blackberries an’ went on eating ’em——”
“Sour they were, too—mean sour!” interjected Tenderfoot Tommy Orr.
“When I started after him I saw that the ground was all sprayed white here and there with the lead poison that the State uses for getting rid of caterpillar pests and I yelled to him to stop. Just a little farther on we came upon two dead rabbits and three dead birds; one o’ the birds, a chewink—little grey ground-robbin, you know—had a half-pecked blackberry in its beak; another, a wild canary, was stiffening out, with a berry ’longside it.”
This looked horribly serious. Tenderfoot Orr groaned aloud and rubbed his cushioned waist-line.
“Well! Tommy made up his mind then that he was a ‘goner’ as well as the chewink. I saw no house or camp near, so I hustled him back to the boat, rowed down the creek, landed here on the Sugarloaf, where I left him a few minutes ago, to look around and see in which direction there was a camp.”
“Ours is the nearest: we’ll give you all the antidotes you want—salt and water enough to float the boat—or the boy! Goody, how that bacon smells!” Penelope sniffed vigorously to the dune breeze. “We must be getting back anyway, mustn’t we, Olive? They won’t know what on earth’s become of us. Oh, come along!” She seized the tenderfoot’s fat arm as she might have seized that of her brother Jim. “Never mind the little diarybook; exercise your will, now, instead of making it!”
And with a heavy groan, led by the mythical odors of bacon sizzling over an outdoor fire, the hungry tenderfoot picked up his broad hat that rested like an olive-green mushroom in a near-by patch of sage-brush, so alike in hue that it would be hard to tell one from the other, arose and followed her.
Near where the dunes sloped down into the beach, the anxious party came upon Captain Andy. He eyed the girls aslant, reprovingly.