“Just as like as not, that camera of his,” Elmer explained. “Amos is crazy on the subject of photography, and his first thought always is, ‘Will it make a striking picture?’ I reckon he thinks he might be able to creep up close enough to snap that chap off, up in the beechnut tree.”
Sure enough out came Amos on the run, and gripping his ready camera.
“I’d like to get him the worst kind, fellows!” he told them. “Some of the boys at home will laugh at us when we tell them we actually saw a black bear up in a tree. I’d make them feel like thirty cents if I could hold up a photo of the happening, taken at closer quarters than this.”
“We’ll all go along, Amos,” suggested Elmer.
Possibly he fancied that the others might find their presence useful in some way or other. It might be wise, Elmer even suspected, since the rash photographer, in his burning desire to get a close view, might run foul of the claws of Bruin, and need material assistance.
“Glad to have you,” agreed Amos, a faint smile coming on his usually wan face; “but let’s hurry, please, because the bear might take a notion to come down, and then my chance would be gone.”
“Follow me,” Elmer told him. “We’ve just got to swing around a bit so as to come up to leeward, for he’d be apt to scent us if we kept straight on down the wind.”
“Good boy, Elmer, you’re right!” commended Wee Willie.
“And now no talking except in whispers, with as little of that as possible. We don’t want to have our walk for nothing, I imagine.”
With these words Elmer led off, the others trooping after him, Amos coming next, then the tall chum, and fat Perk bringing up the rear, as was ordinarily his custom.