“If you mean through a crazy bull moose ramming through a bed of hot ashes,” Andy told him, “I don’t believe it ever did. For all we know no moose ever carried out such a queer prank before last night; even if such a thing happened, why the hunters would put the fire out, just as we did.”
“I guess Uncle George would have been tickled to see a big moose at close quarters like that,” said Tubby. “He’s shot one a year for a long while past. He stops at that, because he says they’re getting thinned out up here in Maine, and even over in Canada, too.”
Breakfast over, the boys loitered around for a while. None of them seemed particularly anxious to be on the move, Andy feeling indifferent, Rob because he knew they were not going far that day, and Tubby through an aversion to once more shouldering that heavy pack. In truth, the only gleam of light that came to Tubby he found in the fact that each day they were bound to diminish their supply of food, and thus the burden would grow constantly lighter.
Finally Rob said they had better be making a start.
“Understand, boys,” he told them, with a smile, “we needn’t try for a record to-day. The fact is, I have reason to believe that old deserted logging camp must be somewhere around this very spot. So, instead of striking away toward the west, we’ll put in our time searching for signs to lead us to it. At any minute we may run across something like a trail, or a grown-up tote-road, along which we can make our way until we strike the log buildings where Uncle George said he meant to make his first stop.”
“Oh! thank you for saying that, Rob,” Tubby burst out with, as his face radiated his happy state of mind. “For myself I wouldn’t mind if we just stuck it out here for a whole week, and let Uncle George find us. But then that wouldn’t be doing the right by my father, so we’ll have to keep on hunting.”
“I don’t mean to get much further away from the boundary,” continued Rob, “for what we saw yesterday bothers me. There’s certainly some desperate scheme brooding; that’s as plain as anything to me.”
“Just to think,” said Tubby, looking around him with a trace of timidity on his ruddy face and in his round eyes, “we may be close to a nest of terrible schemers who mean to do something frightfully wicked, and get poor old Uncle Sam in a hole with the Canadian authorities. Rob, supposing this job is pulled off, and those Canadians feel mighty bitter over the breach of neutrality, do you think they’d march right down to Washington and demand satisfaction? I heard you say they had raised a force of three hundred thousand and more drilled men, and that beats our regular army.”
“I guess there’s small chance of such a thing happening, Tubby,” laughed Andy. “You can let your poor timid soul rest easy. In the first place nearly all the three hundred thousand men have already been sent across the ocean to fight the Germans in the French war trenches, or else they are drilling in England. Then again our cousins across the border are far too sensible.”
“Don’t worry about that a minute,” he was told. “What we must keep in mind is that our patriotism may be called on to prevent these men from breaking our friendly relations with our neighbor, that have stood the test of time so well. If only we could find your Uncle George, Tubby, we’d put it up to him what ought to be done.”