In the excitement attending the discovery of the fire, when he leaped down from the rock to follow Spike up hill, Hugh lost his little leather-covered tablet or note-book in which he had jotted down memoranda of the march. That is, it fell from his pocket and lay at the base of the rock upon which Alec and Blake stood waving and wig-wagging.
Alec saw it fall, and an expression of mean satisfaction stole over his face. Clambering down from the rock, for a moment, he ground the little note-book into the soft earth with his heel, then took up his position once more.
He did not see Joe watching this act, nor did he count on the halfbreed’s secret preference for Hugh. He only realized that without these notes Hugh would be unable to write a good report of the hike, and would therefore fail to win the leadership of the signal corps.
To their surprise, Hugh and Spike found that the breeze, instead of blowing the fire up hill, as it ordinarily would do, was sending it down the slope from a point about half way from the summit; also, that the fire was spreading in an irregular semi-circle which would sweep over the farm as it advanced. They made strenuous efforts to stamp out the end of the blazing curve by beating it with branches torn from a young sapling, and succeeded in getting a very small part of it under control.
Fortunately, the ground was covered thickly with leaves and leaf-mould, damp after recent rains, and so the tongues of flame rose no higher than the lowest branches of the trees, which they licked greedily and then passed on, seeking whatever they might devour.
Finding their best efforts of little avail, Spike and Hugh hastened to rejoin their companions.
When they came to the rock, they found the others had gone on.
“Probably they’ve gone to the farmhouse,” said Spike. “Come on, Hugh! Which way? Hurry!”
“Look!” Hugh responded, glancing around and pointing to a huge fir tree, upon the trunk of which an arrow was freshly blazed. “There’s one of Joe’s signs. They’ve gone in the direction this arrow points.”
“I wond-wonder—what—sort o’ help the lieutenant and—and his scouts found—found in the vil-village?” panted Spike, as they ran on down hill, plunging through clumps of second-growth pines, now slipping over the smooth brown “needles,” now crashing through masses of trailing vines and tall ferns.