“Well, it must be something pretty important to fetch the three of you forty and more miles in a car?” suggested one fellow.
“Just what it is,” jauntily admitted Blake. “Now, can any of you direct us to where we’ll find my cousin Felix?”
“I was talking with him about half an hour back, but haven’t seen him since, now you mention it!” one called out.
“I’d advise you boys to look up Captain Barclay, and he’ll put you in touch with Felix, who must be around somewhere, because we have orders not to wander beyond bounds. There’s the captain’s tent over yonder, Hugh.”
The speaker was big Hank Partridge, a cousin of Lige Corbley, and quite well known to Hugh. As the advice seemed sound, the scout master immediately turned his face toward the tent thus pointed out.
“Come along, boys, and we’ll see what the captain can do for us,” he told his two mates, at the same time starting forward.
Blake was by now beginning to have that worried expression steal back upon his face. His old fears had awakened again, as was evidenced by the remark he made almost immediately after they started toward the captain’s tent.
“It’s mighty queer, I think, how not a single one of all those fellows could remember seeing my cousin inside of half an hour. Things have been happening so contrary lately I’m beginning to be afraid that something may have come along to whisk Felix out of the old camp here so I never will find him.”
“Oh! how silly to let yourself borrow trouble in that way, Blake,” Bud told him, scornfully. “What could carry him off but an aeroplane, and I’m pretty sure they haven’t yet got to ducking down in the heart of a camp, and snatching a fellow up bodily. Just hold your horses, and we’ll run on him pretty soon now.”
They reached the tent of the commanding officer, where a sentry always stood on guard. Hugh, knowing the rules that applied, asked to see Captain Barclay, with whom he was, of course, well acquainted. In another minute the captain himself came forth.