“That is why we are so glad to have morning practice,” added Hugh, in a tone which he honestly intended to be kind. “We Wolves want time to find out what we can do.”
“Buck must have lost his head,” remarked Walter Osborne, who had drawn near.
“He did,” said Alec, emphatically, “and he gave Chief Hardin a chance to qualify in first-aid—at my expense.”
There was no mistaking the resentment that underlay those words. Walt and Billy glanced uneasily at Hugh.
A flush stained Hugh’s bronzed cheeks and brow at the retort, and he turned away scornfully, biting his under lip. It was hard to keep his temper in control, as a scout should; but he managed to do so, and the next moment he was outside the cabin, filling his lungs with deep draughts of the pine-scented air and watching the mists roll up the side of the opposite mountain. With the coming of the sun, he was able to take fresh note of his surroundings, and his eager dark eyes dwelt fondly upon the familiar scene in the first light of a new day.
Indeed, it was a scene to stir any red-blooded boy. As far as Hugh could see through the lifting vapor lay the lake, a great silvery mirror reflecting the heavily wooded shores so clearly that the inverted forest appeared no less real than the original. From the shores of the lake, in every direction, hills sloped ruggedly up into mountains, for the most part clothed to their summits with the variegated green of a mighty woodland. The side of one of the nearer mountains was scarred by exposed ledges of bare rock, which, as Lieutenant Denmead, the Scout Master, had said, would make fine strategic points for the Signalers’ Game.
“We’ll try it some day this week,” he had told Hugh on the previous evening, as he sat with his assistant scout master, Rawson, and the leaders of the four patrols around the camp-fire.
Hugh recalled that vague promise now, as his gaze wandered from those rocky ledges to the deeper hollows not yet penetrated by the sun’s rays.
How dim and mysterious they looked! How Hugh longed to explore them and to discover, by means of such woodcraft as he had already learned, the treasures hidden in those shadowy nooks and ravines!
Several boys of his patrol followed him from the cabin. They saw that something had vexed him, but they made no comments, even among themselves. Presently they dashed away, down to the shore of the lake, where most of the boys from the other cabins were gathered. These boys belonged to the Otter and the Fox patrols.