“Hardin is the name, sir, or plain Hugh. All right, we’ll start with you now,” and the scout master turned to glance around him at the eager faces of his chums.
Every fellow fairly held his breath in anticipation and suspense, hoping that he might be fortunate enough to be selected among those who were to take part in this little adventure.
“Alec, you for one; then Arthur, as you’ve had a hand in the game already, and are making a hobby of tracking, you can be the second. The other two are Billy Worth and Ralph Kenyon.”
The rest of the boys looked downcast, for they were in just the humor to welcome some diversion of this sort. However, they had been too well trained to give voice to their feelings of disappointment.
Hugh and the farmer hurried away, with the others tagging close at their heels. Reaching the road, which was not far from the camp on the river bank, they presently turned into a smaller thoroughfare, and in the end came to where there lay a dense wood on one side with a wide pasture on the other.
The bars of the fence lay on the ground. It was the easiest thing in the world for the scouts, because of their training, to see that someone had taken the pains to toss every bar aside as it was drawn from its sockets; and this would dispose of any suspicion that the cattle had broken the barrier down.
“Here’s the way they started off, you can see, Mr. Stebbins,” said Hugh, as he pointed to the plain impression of many split hoofs in the road, and which led in an opposite direction to the one they had come from.
It was no trouble at all to follow that broad trail; why, Billy Worth declared that even the greenhorn, Harold Tremaine, might have done it with only a few hitches.
“There’s one thing we want to remember, fellows,” remarked Arthur Cameron, after they had been moving along for some little time, and apparently getting closer to where the cattle would be found.
“What’s that?” demanded Alec Sands.