“Don’t say nothin’ ’bout this; jes’ leave it t’ me,” he advised. “I’ll explain it t’ th’ doctor. ’Tain’t like th’ boys o’ th’ lumber camps t’ do no sech trick as this, and I’d hate t’ hev any feelin’ stirred up. You boys jes’ keep mum.”
The boys were quite willing to do so, and bidding them a hasty farewell Jim strode off toward headquarters.
“Queer thing, the whole business,” mused Walter as they watched the guide disappear in the office. “I wonder what Jim’s got on his mind.”
And he would have wondered still more if he could have heard the guide exclaim, as he banged his big fist down on the desk at the end of a fifteen minutes’ talk with the doctor:
“It’s him as sure as shootin’! We’ll git him this time, or my name ain’t Jim Everly!”
CHAPTER XVIII
ON GUARD
On the bald top of Old Scraggy stood a slender figure in khaki. The broad-brimmed regulation Scout hat was tilted back, revealing a sun-browned face which was good to see. The eyes were clear and steady. The mouth might have been called weak but for a certain set of the jaw and a slight compression of the thin lips which denoted a latent force of will which would one day develop into power. It was, withal, a pleasant face, a face in which character was written, a face which denoted purpose and determination.
The boy raised a pair of field-glasses to his eyes and swept the wonderful panorama of forest and lake that unfolded below him on every side. Like mighty billows of living green the mountains rolled away to fade into the smoke haze that stretched along the horizon. The smell of smoke was in the air. Over beyond Mt. Seward hung a huge cloud of dirty white against which rose great volumes of black, shading down to dingy sickening yellowish tinge at the horizon. Through his glasses the boy could see this shot through here and there with angry red. There was something indescribably sinister and menacing in it, even to his inexperienced eyes. It was like a huge beast snarling and showing its teeth as it devoured its prey. On the back side of the Camel’s Hump another fire was raging. But neither of these seriously threatened Woodcraft Camp, for a barrier of lakes lay between.
“I’m glad they’re no nearer,” muttered the watcher half aloud. He swung his glasses around to the camp five miles away by the trail, though not more than three and a half in an air line, and his face softened as he studied the familiar scene. There was a song in his heart and the burden of it was, “They have got some use for me! They have got some use for me! They have got some use for me!” It was Hal Harrison.