The Boy Scouts on the Range

by John Henry Goldfrap

Not till they got back to their camp did the redskins discover that the white boy had served craft with strategy, and outwitted them. It was then too late to follow up the pursuit that night. The redskins knew that any one cunning enough to have devised such a trick would not have stood still while they were chasing a will-o'-the-wisp in the opposite direction to their desired quarry.

And they were right in this assumption. Rob, as soon as the beat of their ponies' hoofs had grown faint, had chuckled to himself at their mistake, and silently as possible resumed his journey. If it had been a hard ride, it was a doubly hard tramp he had before him.

Susyjan had told him that a trail lay not so very far ahead. In the darkness it was possible that he might have lost it. If he had, without food or water, he would soon be in a serious position. But Rob, nevertheless, determined that his best course lay in pushing on, and through the darkness he steadily and pluckily advanced.

Presently he began to ascend what he knew must be a hill or mountainside. This complicated the problem. To go on along level ground was one thing, but to attempt to continue his way over an acclivity as steep as the one that faced him seemed foolhardy. Every step he took might be leading him farther and farther astray.

"Oh, for a nice soft bed!" muttered Rob. "But not having one, a good flat stone would do."

Soon afterward, following a lot of feeling about, he managed to find a flat-surfaced rock which seemed to promise well for a rough and ready couch. To the boy's delight, it retained some of the warmth of the sun which had beaten on it all day, and had he possessed a blanket to throw over it, might not have proved unacceptable as a sleeping place.

Casting himself down on it, Rob soon dozed off, nor did he awaken till the blackness turned to the gray that preceded the dawn. Viewed by daylight, Rob found his surroundings such that he was glad that he had not proceeded any farther during the night. He lay on a hillside behind a screen of chaparral. But what caused him to feel some apprehension, when he thought of what might have happened had he continued his journey, was the fact that below his rock quite a steep slope dropped down to the valley below. It was a drop of some thirty feet, and while in the daylight any active man or boy could have clambered down it without injury, in the dark night it might have meant broken bones.

But Rob had little time to think of such possibilities. Something else suddenly occupied all his attention, and that something was an odor of frying bacon!

Mingled with it came the unmistakable aroma of tobacco. Somebody was camped near him, that was a certainty. His first impulse was to shout, but he checked it. It speaks volumes for the Western training that the boy was rapidly acquiring when it is said that before he showed himself from behind his chaparral, he gazed cautiously through that leafy screen.

Below him he saw three figures seated about a fire, over which was frying the bacon that had aroused his hunger almost to the exclamation point. The three campers, whose ponies were tethered a short distance from them, had their backs turned to Rob, but presently one of them turned to reach something from a saddle bag. Rob came very near to uttering a startled exclamation and betraying his hiding place as he saw the man's features.