“Now you mention it, I believe he did,” replied Walter.
“Pat Malone!” exclaimed Tug triumphantly. “Sure thing. Say, fellows, Pat’s been hanging ’round camp for the last three or four days; what do you suppose he’s after?”
“Looking for a chance to swipe something,” said Billy.
“Aw stow it, Billy! Pat’s tough all right, but that doesn’t make him a thief,” said Chip Harley.
“I saw Pat talking with Hal Harrison up on the Old Scraggy trail just at dusk the other night,” broke in Ned Peasely. “They seemed mighty ’fraid of being seen. Wonder what’s up?”
“Oh, probably Hal’s trying to impress on the natives a sense of his own importance and the power of the almighty dollar,” said Spud.
“Cut it out, Spud,” advised Tug. “Hal’s all right. Some day he’ll forget he’s the son of a millionaire. He’s got good stuff in him.”
“Sure thing,” said Chip. “Say, did you know that he brought in another record fish this morning? Six-pound small-mouth bass. That’s what gets my goat. Here he is, a tenderfoot, and yet he’s putting it all over the fellows that have been here two or three years. He’s rolling up points for the Senecas to beat the band. Say, I’ll bet that Pat Malone has put him next to some secret fishing ground or new bait or something.”
“Speaking of angels——” said Billy.
Walter looked up with the others to see a boy of perhaps fifteen passing on the trail up from the lake. He wore the regulation camp dress, but there was something in his bearing, a suggestion of superiority, a hint of condescension in his curt nod to the group around the tent, that gave Walter the feeling that he considered himself a little above his companions. Yet, withal, there was something likable in his face, despite a rather weak mouth and the shifty glance of his eyes. Instinctively Walter felt that Tug was right, and that beneath the supercilious veneer there was the stuff of which men are made, submerged now by self-indulgence and the misfortune of being born with a silver spoon in his mouth, as Tug expressed it.