The Boy Scouts in A Trapper's Camp

by Thornton W. Burgess

Quite unabashed, Pat bestowed a grin on Upton. "Three bull's-eyes," he commented. "I've been wondering how long it would take you fellows to catch the scent. Began to think I'd have to rub your noses in it."

"Hurrah!" interrupted Hal, who had been an eager listener. "I never thought of the Hollow, and yet there is no place I should like to go to so much as that. Say, Walt, these heads of ours sure are thick. Don't you remember that Pat told us that first night in New York that Alec was trapping, and the last he heard of him he was over in the Hollow? Well, we'd make good detectives, we would. I've done a lot of wondering about Pat's partner and what sort of a fellow he would prove to be and whether or not we'd like him. And to think it's Alec! If you weren't such a young and tender innocent I'd throw you in the snow and give you a shampoo. What do you say, Walt, to doing it anyway?"

"Come on!" cried Pat, "the two of you, or all three!"

Upton shook his head mournfully. "I'd like to, but it wouldn't be right. He isn't as big as the two of us, and so it wouldn't do at all. It would be the same as a big fellow picking on a little one. You know I thrashed him once for doing that very thing, and now if we should turn around and do it I'm afraid the force of my beautiful example would be wholly destroyed. I tell you what, you do it alone, Hal."

"He's too small," declared Hal. "That's why I wanted you to help. Then my conscience would be only half guilty. I'm going to let him off this time with just a snowball."

Suiting his action to the word he landed a big soft snowball full on the side of Pat's head. Pat made a rush for him, but Walter thrust out a foot and sent him headlong into the snow, and before he could regain his feet Hal was on him endeavoring to wash his face with snow. In a second there was the liveliest kind of a snow fight, Upton and Sparrer yelling encouragement with absolute impartiality. It ended with Hal's smothered cry of "enough" and Pat's allowing him up just in time to see Walter and then Sparrer unceremoniously pitched into the snow, by way of showing that all Scouts are equal, Pat explained, as he rubbed their faces.

Panting and glowing from the frolic they put out the fire built to heat their soup and were ready to hit the trail again. From this point on the snow-shoes were an absolute necessity, for they left the lumber trail for another ten miles through the woods. This time they were not dependent on the blazed trees as they had been when they went that way in the fall, for some one had been over the trail since the last snowfall, evidently coming out from Little Goose. Pat studied the tracks for a few minutes. Then his face cleared. "It was Big Jim," said he. "I wonder now if he took a look in the Hollow to see how Alec was getting on. He may have been over to the Gillicuddy camp, the trail from which comes in at the pond, you remember, but I have an idea he swung around to see Alec. I wonder now where he saw that fox. I just took it for granted that it was around where he is cutting and didn't ask any questions for fear of letting the coon out of the hole about where we were going. Then when I was alone with the doctor we both forgot all about Jim, there were so many other things to talk about. It may be that he saw that silver gray somewhere along this trail. We'll keep our eyes peeled for signs."

"How do you know that Big Jim made these tracks?" asked Walter, who had been studying them closely, hoping to find out for himself the clue which made Pat so sure of his man, but unable to see anything distinctive save that they were of odd shape, being nearly round.

"By a combination of two things—the shape of the tracks and the length of the stride," replied Pat. "Jim always uses bear's-paw shoes, and I don't believe there are more than half a dozen other pairs in this neck of woods. Then look at the length of the stride. It's a good three inches longer than mine, and there's nothing dainty about mine. There isn't a man in the woods who could take that stride and hold it but Jim Everly. So I'm as sure it was Big Jim as I am that if we don't get a hustle on we'll have to camp in the snow, and it'll be a lot more comfortable at the pond. We've got another long hike to-morrow, and we want to be in shape to do it."

For some miles the going was fairly level, and once they had got into the swing of the thing the boys found it comparatively easy. There were two or three mishaps, but these were counted part of the sport. About two miles from their destination they came to a spur of a mountain over which the trail led. In fact, it was the very spur on the other side of which Spud Ely had overrun the trail and got lost the fall previous. Pat called a halt.