“No need,” observed Hugh, who had as usual been keeping his eyes on the alert, and made a few discoveries. “Here are all the poles we’ll need, lying in a bunch. Probably some fellow had been gathering them for bean poles or something like that, and then forgot to take them away.”
“Talk to me about luck, we get it in hunks, don’t we?” cried Billy. “Why, where could we have run across better poles to make a stretcher? All we want is some stout cord to fasten the ends together, so they won’t slip.”
“Here’s a piece of rope the bear man seemed to have been carrying along with him for some purpose or other,” said Hugh. “I picked it up near where he lay, knowing we might make use of it some way. By unwinding these strands we’ll have more than all the cord we need to tie the poles across each other.”
All of them immediately busied themselves, and so well had their lesson been learned that in a very short time they had fashioned a splendid litter. The wounded man watched them work with a sparkle of gratitude in his eyes. He must have realized by now that those khaki uniforms which these boys wore meant succor for him, and it is greatly to the credit of Boy Scouts everywhere that seldom does this confidence in their willingness to give aid in times of distress meet with disappointment.
After the litter had been finished, they laid enough hemlock browse upon it to make a pretty soft mattress. As Billy felt of that and scented the delightful piney odor, he nodded his head and remarked:
“I only hope that if ever I break a leg and have to be carried to the doctor’s, I’ll be lucky enough to lie on as fine a stretcher as this, that’s all I can say.”
Hugh took hold of one end, and Billy started at the other. They meant to take turns and in this way “rest up,” as Billy called it.
“You’re heading so as to reach the road, I take it?” remarked Arthur presently.
“Just what I’m doing,” the scout master replied. “We ought to make use of our wheels in some way to take off most of the strain of carrying this man to town.”
“Who’d ever have thought of that but you, Chief?” cried Billy, who was looking a little tired. The task of stumbling along, bearing half of that weight over rough ground, was far from an easy one.