As there was no answer it seemed settled that Arthur must be the only scout who had left the vicinity of the camp since the hour when they sat around having their midday meal.
“Do you know anything about this matter, Arthur?” asked Hugh; while the farmer fixed his small, piercing eyes on the eager, flushed face of the scout as though he would bore him through, and read in advance what he was expecting to reply.
“I’m not so sure, but I think I do,” Arthur started to say. “You see, I came in only a short time ago, and meant to tell the queer thing I’d seen, but somehow it slipped my mind. That’s why I haven’t spoken of it up to now.”
“What do you mean by calling it a queer thing?” questioned Hugh, while all of the others pressed in closer so that they might not lose a single syllable.
“I’ll tell you, Hugh. I started out to mosey around a bit, not meaning to go so very far away. You know I’m getting to enjoy searching for the tracks of small animals more and more, and keep a record of everything I see connected with the trail of a rabbit or a fox or a ’coon.”
“Yes, we know all that, Arthur, so get down to business, please,” said Hugh.
“I was just coming out of some woods into a side road when I heard loud voices, and noticed three foreign-looking men passing through a pasture where there was a bunch of cattle feeding. All at once they called out in alarm, and I saw that one of the cattle, a Holstein bull marked black with a white band about its body, was making headlong after the men, who were running like mad for the fence.”
“Wow! Lucky Arthur to be the one to have such a free show!” Billy Worth was heard to say, half under his breath.
“They managed to just get over the fence and no more,” continued the narrator; “in fact, I’m not quite sure but what that bull helped the last man over, for there was a lot of angry talk afterward when the men were brushing themselves off. I wanted to laugh out loud the worst kind, but they looked so black, and I’ve heard these dagoes always carry knives with them, so I thought I would show my good sense in bobbing back into the woods and continuing my hunt for tracks in another direction.”
“You didn’t see anything more of the three foreign-looking men then, Arthur?” queried the scout master.