“The only place I like to stay at is nowhere,” Hervey said; “and I don’t care to stay very long even there. Why didn’t the bunch in Administration Shack let that troop know before they started, I wonder?”
“The troop sent a telegram,” Willie Cook said.
“What do you say we hike to Bear Mountain to-night?” Hervey said.
“Are there bears there?” Willie wanted to know.
I said, “No, they call it Bear Mountain because all the scouts go round in their bare feet up there. Give me Temple Camp every time; there’s only one thing I don’t like about it, and that is going home from it.”
“If you like it so much it’s a wonder you don’t go there,” Pee-wee shouted. “You’ve been going there all day and none of us are there yet. Pretty soon the smoke will die down and then what? You know yourself you can’t trust signboards or anything up here. We know that column of smoke is in the west because that’s where the sun went down and we know that Temple Camp is the only place that sends up a big column of smoke like that. Are you going to stop your nonsense and follow it or not?”
“We don’t need the smoke,” Warde said. “See that roof right in line with the smoke? All we have to do is to follow the roof——”
“We’ll climb over it,” Hervey said.
“Let the smoke die down. What do we care?” Garry said. “The roof won’t die down; that’s a sure beacon.”
All of a sudden Hervey jumped up. “Follow your leader,” he said.