“That sounds true to me, Hugh,” Billy observed; “but then, the city was never so much worked up as now, and the people won’t stand for any of that funny business. If the mayor is back of us, then the Chief had better look out or he’ll lose the number of his mess. Seems to me he’s on to that fact, too, which accounts for the way he acts toward us scouts. We represent thirty-eight families, and some of the most influential in town. Guess he begins to think he’s fooling with a buzz-saw when he tries to go against the sentiment of the best citizens.”
“Watch that fellow over there, Billy,” said Hugh, putting out his hand and holding his companion still under the shadow of a willow tree.
“It’s a boy, isn’t it? He seems to be looking around as if he wanted to find out whether this section was being patrolled and where the guards hold out, eh, Hugh?”
“Do you notice that he’s got his cap drawn away down over his face? But it seems to me that his walk is familiar,” Hugh responded. “If you asked me who he is, I’d give a guess and say Andy Wallis!”
“The Chief’s own nephew!” ejaculated Billy.
“Yes, and as he doesn’t live in this part of town at all, the question is: what brings him here?” remarked Hugh in a whisper, all the while watching the actions of the shadowy figure across the street.
The boy may have suspected that he was seen, for suddenly starting to whistle, as though he did not have a care in the wide world, he walked off at a more rapid pace and vanished around the near-by corner, where he would enter upon the next patrol’s post.
“Do you think he was spying out the land, Hugh?” Billy inquired eagerly.
“That’s hard to say,” came the answer; “but one thing is sure, he wouldn’t be in this neighborhood unless he had some scheme in his head. I’m inclined to think he is acting as a sort of decoy to draw some of us away while others get in their work.”
“Gee! that sounds interesting,” remarked “Billy the Wolf,” as his chums often called him, no doubt because he was so often heard practicing the long-drawn howl of the Wolf Patrol.