“Will you come back the same way?” asked Monkey.
“I don’t know about that,” Hugh replied. “The boys must have been tramping around more or less since they’ve been up the river, and perhaps they may know of some short-cut over the hills to the mill. But I’m off. Don’t expect us until late in the afternoon.”
“Gee! I hope you get here before night sets in,” muttered Billy with a quick glance toward the weird looking mill as seen through the scattered undergrowth.
Hugh did not have the least difficulty in following the back trail. All he had to do was to keep to the road until he came to a couple of white birches which he had noticed hung out in a queer way just about the place where the trail had formed a junction with the overgrown mill road. After that he kept his eyes mostly on the ground, where he could readily pick up the various footprints left by all those who had passed along.
When he finally arrived at the place where the motorcycles had been hidden, he hastened to get his own machine in hand. Once he started along the back road, he made quick time of it. There was small danger that he would lose his bearings, as Billy might have done under similar conditions, for Hugh made sure of things as he went along.
In due time he reached the bridge that spanned the river, which was quite narrow at this point. Looking up the stream, Hugh found that it made a quick turn some little distance away. He could also see that it was beginning to widen at this point.
“I guess it can’t be very far to Raccoon Island,” he told himself. Having jumped from the saddle, he started to push his machine toward the left side of the road.
As he had hoped might be the case, he found indications there to tell him that some sort of a trail ran along the river bank heading upstream. Doubtless, parties going fishing may have made it; and all sorts of people had used it in coming or going. Cows even followed the beaten track, for Hugh quickly discovered traces of their presence.
“Not half as bad as I expected,” he told himself as he pushed on, though it was anything but fun to urge that heavy machine over roots and uneven ground.
Hugh generally looked at the bright side of things. He kept his spirits up when the clouds grew dark and forbidding by telling himself that it might easily be a great deal worse. That is the way with scouts; they are taught always to look for the silver lining of the cloud and never to despair.