And the future and the past,”
moaned Harry, while a smile of delight stole over Gordon’s sleepy countenance.
“Kipling’s a fiend, isn’t he, Harry?”
“Kid, if you ever mention that song to me again, I’ll do something desperate!”
CHAPTER XV
THE OWNER OF THE RETICULE
The sleeping propensity of a top is nothing to the way Harry and Gordon slumbered. You cannot sleep such sleep indoors. You need the starry sky, the dark surrounding trees, the lullaby of cricket and locust, the low, musical rustle of leaves. Then you can sleep, as Gordon put it, “till the cows come home.”
It must have been the custom for the cows in that vicinity to come home at seven A. M., for at that hour the boys awoke, and Harry soon had water boiling for the coffee. Of course, every one’s way of making coffee is by far the best way. The scout way is to bring your water to a boil first, then drop your coffee in and stir like the mischief.
At eight-thirty they had every single thing in their bags and were on their way down the northern slope of the mountain. You would not have known that any one had camped at the spot except for the ashes of the fire and the beaver’s head scratched on a rock.
They followed a winding, woodland path, scarcely visible in places. “What’s this?” asked Gordon, picking up a small, flat, triangular stone which his alert eyes had discovered. It proved to be an Indian arrow-head about an inch and a half long and nearly an inch wide at one end, tapering to a blunt point at the other. Harry showed his companion how, wedged into the split end of a stick and bound firmly, it constituted the old-time arrow of the bloody Mohawk tribe, whose savage warwhoops had no doubt once been heard along this obscure mountain path.
Gordon trudged along, kicking the earth in search of more of these murderous souvenirs. Although they searched carefully, they could find no more of them, but Harry came upon something which held a grewsome interest. At the base of an old oak tree where the earth was gray and powdery, he found the head of a tomahawk, eaten with rust and so encrusted with earth that he was able to break off the corners of it as if it had been made of plaster.