“Good! We’re off!” Bud Morgan was heard to mutter.
Trooping at the heels of their leader they quickly rounded the building.
“What’s that moving along over there?” asked Whistling Smith, who had suddenly discovered a strange sort of glow apparently creeping close to the ground within the stockade, and looking very uncanny.
“Why, don’t you know? That’s our chum, Ralph, and he’s using that bully little hand torch Monkey Stallings loaned him,” Billy Worth hastened to inform the other.
They soon came up with Ralph, who had stopped close to the stockade.
“Here’s where they got in and out, Hugh,” the tracker was saying, as he pointed to where there was a gap in the barricade, a heavy plank having been removed.
“As like as not those rascals arranged all this before they left the place,” observed Hugh, as he saw the missing plank lying on the ground close by. “They figured that they’d want to come back for something, and this board was left hanging loosely so that, while it looked all right, it could be removed with half an effort.”
There was nothing strange about the way the scout master figured this out. His training had sharpened his wits and enabled him to solve what might have been a bit of a mystery to some boys. But then it is part of a scout’s business to use reason and judgment, and this was what both Hugh and Ralph were doing.
“It looks more and more as if my guess had hit the bull’s-eye right in the center,” Ralph was saying, half to himself, in a satisfied way.
“About the three men, you mean of course, Ralph,” Hugh remarked. “Yes, none of us will ever look at it any other way now. Crawl through, and we’ll follow you. This is the first stage of the tracking game; if the rest pans out as well, I can see victory in the air!”