At last they got started.
Every little while Wee Willie would throw back his head and awaken the echoes with a really stentorian whoop, such as might well have made an Indian brave look envious. They always listened afterwards with a degree of eagerness, in hopes of catching some return call; but time after time it went with only a mocking crow winging its flight overhead uttering a derisive “caw”; or else a blue jay scolding the invaders of its woods haunt.
Elmer tried to figure out about what course Perk was most apt to take. In so doing he had their recent experience to guide him; for he easily remembered how the lost boy kept unconsciously edging toward the left, as wanderers most generally do.
“I notice you keep on the watch all the while, Elmer,” said Amos; “while Wee Willie and myself use our eyes to scan the woods on every side, hoping to discover a sign of a moving form, or maybe a handkerchief waving at us from some far-away tree on a rise, you scan the ground. Do you expect to run across his trail again, where he started in after the rain was over?”
“I can’t say I expect that, Amos,” he was told, quietly; “but it’s always possible, you know. Perk must be somewhere within five miles of us right now, if only we could get in touch with him.”
“It would certainly be a grand good thing if we did raise his track once more,” Wee Willie attested; “we’d keep on like so many wolves chasing their quarry, until we ran him down. But, Elmer, I hope we won’t have any difficulty about making our way back to camp after we pick Perk up?”
There was a tiny vein of anxiety in the tall chum’s query; in fact, Wee Willie was speculating at the time whether he could contrive to live through the day with just that small cake of chocolate to sustain his sinking energies. Already he began to claw at any berries he chanced to see close to his hand in passing, as though the red Antwerps might help him ward off the dreadful feeling of distress that came with “Nature abhorring a vacuum.”
“I’ve got my bearing well in hand,” he was calmly assured. “Just as soon as we find our chum you’ll see me head around, and I warrant I can take you in a bee-line to our jolly old cabin.”
“That’s the right name to give it, Elmer,” agreed Wee Willie, contritely. “At first it looked so forlorn and disreputable that any style seemed to fit the outfit; and I guess I tacked on a lot of sarcastic names such as ‘old,’ ‘shack,’ ‘shanty,’ and the like. But, say, right now I beg pardon; that same cabin holds the wherewithal that links my body to this earth, all our stock of delicious food, and for that reason if nothing else, it’s going to be the ‘dear old cabin’ to me from this time on.”
Elmer came to a sudden stop, and held up his hand.