“He has, Harry.”
“All right, now you’re talking. Evidently they stopped and talked here. That stick must have been stuck down pretty well into the ground to leave a hole that would stay there after the rain we’ve had in the last couple of days. But if they knew they wanted to get into that woods, why didn’t they come up the shore? What were they doing away in here west of the mountain? Let’s take a look at that road for a little way.”
They could see by the map that the crossroad skirted the northern slope of the mountain and ran along the bay shore, under the precipitous east wall, and thence into the woods. But surely if the Oakwood troop had come up from Ticonderoga knowing their destination, they would have taken another and easier way to reach it.
With their inspection of the crossroad, the weak, sickly little clue grew to robust proportions.
“Here’s where Mac got hungry, Kid,” Harry commented, kicking a piece of silver paper. “Let’s see, now, if we can make anything out of all this.” He looked smilingly round.
Meanwhile, Gordon’s observant eye had discovered something which gladdened his heart,—a true, out-and-out scout sign. A little way down the crossroad, along the right-hand side, a small square was scratched with stone on a rock, with an arrow pointing from one of its sides. It did not take Gordon long to take three paces from this stone in the direction of the arrow.
“Let’s have your ax, Harry.”
In a minute more, both boys were sitting by the roadside poring over a few words written on a piece of paper, which puzzled them more than they helped, however. It simply said, in what appeared to be a hasty scrawl:
“If any of you come back this way, follow blazing.”
“If any of them come back this way,” repeated Harry. “What in the dickens have they done—separated?” In a moment the answer came to him. “Kid,” he said, “I may be all wrong, but I have an idea that some of them went on into Port Henry to hire boats. That’s why they were up as far as this. Probably they couldn’t find half a dozen canoes and dories farther down. Here’s where they separated. Some went on, and the rest stayed here—you can see they loafed around here—look at the chocolate wrapper. Mac can’t sit down a minute without eating—he’ll weigh a ton if he keeps on. Maybe the fellows that went on expected to make arrangements for boats and perhaps come down the lake in them. Anyway, the boys that waited here probably thought that some of them might come back along this road expecting to find them, so when they decided to go on they left this. I can’t make it out—they’ve been here, that’s sure, and they’ve blazed a way off this road down a ways. Come on!”