Bert Wilson at the Wheel

by J. W. Duffield

“Don, boy, look here,” cried Bert, coming out of the mess tent after dinner with a plate of scraps. “Now how are you going to thank me for it?” he asked as Don pranced up, barking and wig-wagging with his tail.

Don’s answer was to stick his cold muzzle into Bert’s hand and to wig-wag a little harder.

“Now, old fellow,” said Bert when Don had cleared the plate, “some of the boys are hunting butterflies over there and I want you to get this note to them right away. Do you understand, Beauty?”

The dog looked up with full understanding in the eyes that said so much and barked joyfully as Bert tied the note to his collar. He started off in the direction pointed out to him perfectly happy in the thought that he was serving his master.

Bert looked fondly after the proudly lifted head and waving silver brush of his favorite. The dog had been a mystery to the whole camp. He seemed to know what was said to him and scarcely ever failed to carry out any directions given him. He had learned a great many tricks in the few days he had been in camp besides displaying some he had mastered previously. With one accord they decided that he must have been stolen by the tramps, who, in the discomfort and excitement of the other day, had forgotten all about him.

A squad of the boys had that morning been sent over to the hills on an all-day hike to hunt for butterflies and to study ants—the last had become a favorite amusement among them since Dick’s talk of a few days before. Bert had expected to go with them, but, as more supplies were needed from the village, he had volunteered to go over for them in the “Red Scout,” although he would much rather have gone with the “bug squad.” The note that he had entrusted to Don contained a warning to the boys to come home by the main road and not attempt to come over the hills as they contained many dangerous holes and pitfalls. He was sure that Don could find the boys because he had gone with them more than once on their hikes among the hills.

Meanwhile, up in the hills, one of the boys, Arthur Gray by name, had wandered way off from his fellows before he realized it. A strikingly beautiful butterfly had led him on and on, now lingering on one flower, now on another, always flitting away at the very instant when Arthur felt sure of success. Finally, with a lazily graceful motion of its delicately marked wings, it flew away and was lost to sight, leaving Arthur to “mop his fevered brow,” as Dick would have said.

Looking around him he discovered that the boys were nowhere to be found. He reached for his pocket compass and found, to his great surprise and dismay, that it wasn’t there.

By this time, really worried, he tried to remember where he was and which way he had come, but all with no result. The butterfly had led him there by such a roundabout path that he could not, for the life of him, point out the direction from which he had come. What should he do? In a moment he thought that he had brought his watch with him—more by luck than anything else, for he often left it at the camp—and he remembered that he could find in what direction the South lay by means of it.

By that time it was exactly four o’clock, and, pointing the hour hand toward the sun, he found that the number 2 on his watch-face pointed to the South: that is, half the distance between four o’clock and twelve when the other hand is pointed toward the sun, marks the southerly direction. Of course, when he had one point of the compass it was very simple for him to find the others—that being a necessary part of summer camp training. Arthur knew that the camp lay somewhere to the East so he started to get there as fast as his legs would carry him.