CHAPTER IV.
THE WORK OF THE SCOUTS.
“Where was this that you saw the discharged guards?” asked the scout master, after Ralph had made his report.
“Over on the other side of the plant,” came the reply. “You see I was just prowling around, curious to discover what lay there, because none of our fellows had bothered taking a look at that side of the stockade, and I wanted to know how they meant to defend it in case of a rush from one or two hundred strikers.”
“That was all right, Ralph,” Hugh told him; “though it’s a wonder you didn’t get a hail from one of the sheriff’s posse and be asked what business you had looking around.”
“To go on with my story, Hugh, I want to say that I don’t think much of that same posse of the sheriff. Why, he’s just picked up a lot of ordinary men in a hurry, and armed them with guns and badges to back him up. They might fight all right in a pinch, but let me tell you they would never be able to guard that plant against a troop of wideawake Boy Scouts. Why, we could creep in on ’em while they dozed at their posts, and first thing they knew it would be ‘hands up everybody; you’re IT!’”
Hugh laughed at hearing Ralph speak in this strain. He knew that the other was considered an unusually clever scout, for which his love of the woods and former business of hunting and trapping game had especially fitted him.
“Well, that’s a good word for all scouts you’re giving, Ralph,” he said. “And so it was while you were sizing up the watchfulness of the new guards that you discovered the presence of the old ones, was it?”
“Yes, I happened to be in a position to drop down in the brush at the time, and they didn’t glimpse me for a cent,” continued Ralph, with an unconscious touch of pride in his voice. “They were all eyes for the plant, and I could understand they didn’t want to be seen by anybody.”
“Perhaps they’d forgotten something, and were returning to get it?” suggested the scout master, in order to draw the other out.
“Not much,” was Ralph’s vigorous protest, “they acted too suspicious for that, I tell you, Hugh. If they had wanted to get something in an open and aboveboard way why wouldn’t they walk straight up to the gate and send word to the sheriff?”