“I’m going to make a very important suggestion to the scout master when he has told us what our part in the game will be,” Billy remarked. The others eyed him respectfully, wondering what sagacious idea had come into the mind of this comrade who was a boon companion of Hugh’s.
But now the three patrol leaders came up. Hugh made motions intended to gather all the others in a close clump, because he did not wish to speak any louder than could be helped. Though they had selected a retired spot in which to gather and consult, there was always more or less danger of being overheard. Sounds sometimes travel remarkably far in the woods, especially just as dusk steals out from the shadows and starts to envelop all Nature in her mantle.
“This is what we’ve fixed on, fellows,” began Hugh, who never made a practice of using twenty words when ten would answer the same purpose. “Don knows a way by which some of us can crawl into a sort of loft that lies just above the place the two tramps will use for sleeping, because of a layer of straw he saw there. I’ll let him take four of the best climbers with him—they will be Monkey, Ralph, Sam, and Blake Merton. The rest of you will stick by me, and we hope to get fixed so that when the signal is given the scouts will drop and tumble in on those hoboes, hobbling them by sheer numbers, so that they won’t have so much as a chance even to use their fists, much less their guns. Get that, do you?”
“As plain as print, Hugh,” advised Bud Morgan, “but what’s the battle sign going to be, so every one of us may be keen to sense the signal and act on the flash?”
“When Don has placed his force just as he wants it, he’ll scratch four times on the floor just like a gnawing rat might happen to do—four times, no more or less, remember, Don. Then, after waiting about a minute or so for every fellow to get a full breath, I’ll give a whistle. Of course that will startle the men, but we calculate to be tumbling in on them pell-mell before they can begin to get up. Divide your squad, Don, so that at least two will drop with a squash on that short rascal, because I rather think he’ll prove the harder one to knuckle under.”
“And do we have the privilege of using these, if necessary?” asked Bud, holding up the home-run bat which was his special property, and had been brought along on the camping trip in anticipation of some lucky chance for a game.
“Only in case of absolute necessity,” Hugh replied soberly. “Don’t forget that you are first of all scouts, and pledged to try every other means before resorting to force.”
“Is that all settled then, Mr. Scout Master?” asked Billy eagerly. “Because if you’ve no other directions to give us, I’d like mighty well to make what I consider a very important suggestion.”
The rest of the boys pricked up their ears. It was not often that good-natured Billy Worth conjured up any important idea in that rather easy-going brain of his, and they were more than curious to hear what it might be.
“All right, Billy, let us have it,” the scout master told him, “and if it sounds good to me, I’ll be only too glad to incorporate it in the program.”