“Of course, we ought to try to follow up Perk’s trail as long as it’s light enough, eh, Elmer?”
“I expect to, and even afterwards by the help of our lantern, Wee Willie. If he’s kept turning to the left, as I suppose will be the case, and we continued along due east, we’d soon be leaving him further and further away. As it is we can cover several miles before we’re forced to quit, and a burst of shouts might reach him.”
CHAPTER XV
CAUGHT IN THE STORM
So plain was the trail of the wanderer that they had no trouble in following it at quite a rapid pace. Indeed, Elmer calculated that they were proceeding even faster than Perk himself had gone along; for as a rule the stout chum was not prone to make speed except when circumstances demanded that he let himself out—in a baseball game; or it might be a sack race for a prize.
More than once did Elmer mentally take himself to task for not starting out much sooner. The afternoon was closing in, and it would not be a great while before night came on. Even another precious half hour of daylight might have proven of considerable value to them; but then Elmer knew it was useless now to indulge in vain regrets.
By the time it began to get so dusky that even his keen eyes had difficulty in making out the trail, he decided it was necessary to make use of the lantern.
They had come quite a distance, Wee Willie figuring it out as possibly a couple of miles, which must have been a conservative guess, Elmer agreed. So he struck a match, and presently when the trail was taken up again the lantern light allowed them to see Perk’s heavy tracks plainly.
Already they had changed their course considerably. Perk aimed to avoid pushing through many of the thickets, and rough places he encountered; which had a tendency to throw him now to the right, and again to the left, until naturally he became bewildered, and doubtless for the life of him could not decide in which quarter the cabin lay.
From the indications Wee Willie judged that he had stopped to cast a stone into numerous thickets, in expectation of starting a partridge out, which he hoped would betray that queer trick the other boys had been speaking about. When after much wandering, and repeated failures to score, Perk finally made up his mind that it was time for him to turn his face toward camp, he must have been thoroughly disgusted to discover that he did not have the slightest idea as to whether the cabin lay on the right, the left, before, or behind him; and that he was really and truly lost.
But then that did not have any great terror for Perk. He had been lost so many times before that it was getting to be an old story. Doubtless he would keep on trying to “find himself” until he realized the hopelessness of it all, when he would philosophically sit down, to make a fire, and toast his shins, until such time as his mates came along with a rescue party; for he knew they could easily follow his tracks.