“It’s out of the question, Kid.”
“No, it isn’t either,” persisted Gordon. “Here we are, a couple of scouts—been tracking and stalking and signaling and woodcrafting and all that sort of thing for six months. We know the troop is going to camp along Lake Champlain on the New York side.”
“Lake Champlain’s a hundred and fourteen miles long,” interrupted Harry.
“That’s nothing. We know they’re somewhere along the west shore of that lake—I say, let’s go and find them.”
“Why, you hair-brained kid, it would be like hunting for a needle in a haystack,” said Harry, warming up a little to the idea under the younger boy’s enthusiasm.
“Well, there’s a way to find a needle in a haystack, Harry. You fix a big magnet on the end of a long stick and then begin—”
But that was as far as he got. Harry Arnold sat down on the edge of the bed and laughed himself hoarse. He came out of this fit in much the same condition as one comes out from the crisis of a fever. His ill humor was quite gone and his mood was more agreeable and receptive than it had been since he left the station in quest of his delinquent friend.
“It would be a great thing,” said he, “only—”
“There’s no only about it, Harry. It can be done and we can do it. We’ll start before there’s a chance to hear. No sirree! They’ll not have the laugh on me. We’ll drop in on them some fine day as if we’d dropped from the clouds.”
The attractive features of the scheme began rapidly to appeal to the older boy. It was all very well tracking and stalking in the Oakwood woods, where any member of the troop could take his bearings by the church steeple. It was all very well pretending to be lost. It was a good enough makeshift to think up emergencies, to make them to order, and then gallantly to surmount them by a knowledge of woodcraft. But here was a real test for their ability, their endurance, their sagacity, their observation, resource, and experience. A Saturday afternoon grapple with the little patch of Oakwood woods was like a bout with a punching bag—the exercise was good, but the element of uncertainty and real peril was absent. For a punching bag cannot hit back. And after all they had only been playing a game in which Nature—the opponent—had been frightfully handicapped. She had held no surprises for them and presented no obstacles. The difficulties they had overcome had been manufactured for that especial purpose. They had pretended to be lost—but they could hear the Town House bell every half-hour. No, the whole thing seemed tame beside the enchanting picture of a real encounter with Nature up among the rugged foothills of the Adirondacks.