He selected the last named scout because he knew that Ned had been sick before coming on this trip, and was not overly stout at best. If there was apt to be a battle of any sort with those tramps, then only the strongest boys should be allowed to take part in it, Hugh concluded.
Ned bit his lips as though in protest; but he knew better than to give vent openly to his disappointment. A scout learns to obey without questioning when it is a superior who gives the order; and in this way he shows that he has some of the elements of a true soldier in him though fighting is foreign to his training, and it must be resorted to only when all other means fail.
“How will we go, Hugh?” asked Bud Morgan, who had stepped over to one of the tents and reappeared, bearing a baseball bat in his hands.
His example started the others to skirmishing around in search of clubs. One of the boys strapped on his camp hatchet; another secured the belt that held his hunting knife. Still more found various-sized sticks to their liking. One and all looked grim and determined, as though they realized that this expedition was not in the nature of a picnic, but a serious undertaking, indeed.
“I was hoping that some of you might know a short-cut over the hill in the direction of that abandoned grist mill?” Hugh observed, looking straight at Don Miller.
The smile that immediately broke out on the face of the Fox leader told him that he was about to receive reassuring news.
“We do know a way over,” Don hastened to say. “Fact is some of us had heard about that old mill, and knew about where it lay. So just the day before yesterday, Arthur coaxed me to go with him. He said he wanted to snap off a few photographs of the ruin, which was worth while seeing, somebody had told him. Well, we made a cut across, and found the mill all right, but the clouds had come up so black that he never took a single picture. Arthur was feeling pretty bad about it, and made me promise to go with him again before we broke camp. Then, on the way back, he wrenched his foot, and I had to half carry him the last mile.”
“You saw no sign of anyone around the place when you were there, I suppose,” Hugh remarked.
“Well, there were footprints enough,” Don replied, “and we reckoned that parties sometimes wandered up that way to try the fishing in the pond above the mill or in the runway. But we didn’t meet anybody, if that’s what you mean, Hugh.”
“And Don, couldn’t you manage to carry my camera along, so if the sun shines you might find a chance to snap off those three views I showed you?” pleaded Arthur, as he held up the little black box.