Carefully they worked through the afternoon, peering into every opening, following every slightest path, calling every few minutes that they might not lose one another, and with the added hope that a little voice might answer.
Later they came upon the neighbors and learned that the child had left the cousin’s home early that morning unseen by any one. There were not many hunters, less than a dozen, including two or three school-boys. Three or four small ranches were all the settlements on that side of the lake; the few children rowed across the narrow inlet to the school on the other side.
A fear that the scouts had not voiced was yet present in every heart,—the wild creatures, cats and bears. Billy asked of this, under his breath that the smaller boys might not hear. The answer was reassuring. There was such a fulness of wild young growth that animals would not be hungry, and a little thing that did not attack them was comparatively safe.
The men had taken out several dogs; but they were untrained, and the rain had washed away what scent there might have been. They did nothing but start up small game and go baying off on their own quest.
Till nearly dark they all beat the woods but with no success. The boys were worn. The men believed the search useless and discussed among themselves the advisability of dragging the lake. However when dark fell they ate hastily of food brought to them by some of the women, and set out again with lanterns into the woods.
Billy was anxious. He was responsible for getting his scouts home not only safe but in good order; and he believed that to continue the hunt without rest would utterly exhaust them. Though his own desire was to push on, and on, through the night and the awful forest till it was compelled to give up its secret, he ordered them to make camp.
CHAPTER XI
“WHOSE GLORY WAS REDRESSING HUMAN WRONG”
BILLY kept every one busy till an excellent meal was ready. It would surprise those unaccustomed to camping to know that they had hot potatoes, broiled bacon, coffee, and hot bannocks—“sinkers,” the boys called them. Yet they had neither kettles nor dishes, except one aluminum pail, and each scout had his collapsible cup.
The potatoes were roasted in the ashes, the bannocks were mixed in the pail, patted into thin, wafer-like biscuits, spread on a clean board Billy had begged at the farmhouse, and put to bake before the fire. The pail was then washed and used for the coffee. The bacon was toasted, each man for himself, his slice pinched in the split end of a green stick.