“Why not?” demanded Jack, indignantly. “I have as good a right as you. Who delegated you to carry the rations?”
“Nobody else seemed to want to. Now I’m in charge of the commissary department, and I’m going to put you, and myself included, on short rations. We may have to stay out all——”
“Ahem!” interrupted Paul, giving Walter a nudge. “Do you see anything like a house through the trees? Cut out that talk about having to stay out all night, if that’s what you were going to say,” he added in a quick whisper.
“It was,” Walter admitted. “But I’ll cease.”
“You’d better. We don’t want the girls to get nervous.”
“I don’t see any house,” Jack reported, having looked in the direction indicated by Paul.
“I thought I saw smoke, and where there’s smoke there’s generally a house or a camp,” Paul said. “However, I may have been mistaken.”
It was evident that he had been, but a little later, as they once more emerged from the woods, Cora gave a joyful cry and called out:
“There it is!”
“What, our camp?” asked Belle.