Step, too, was grieved by the calamity, though his disappointment was not so keen. After all, he was not the originator of the Great Idea; that melancholy honor belonged exclusively to Poke. Hence, when he had reached a more amicable understanding with his partner in regard to the condition of the Saracen’s gear, it was easier for him to take the view that there was no virtue in shedding tears over spilt milk. But Step as well as Poke would be the better for new interests, Sam decided; and quest of the Freeman brook suggested a desirable opportunity.
Mr. Zorn had spoken of inspecting the camp in a day or two, but the week wore away with no word from him. On Friday afternoon the club, in full force, hiked to the lake, prepared to remain there until Monday morning, when Lon was to appear with the big car and whisk them back to town in time for school. The evening passed pleasantly and quietly, their night’s rest was undisturbed, and early Saturday morning Sam marshaled the clan for the march across country. All carried fishing tackle, though it was admitted that angling would be a mere incident of the day.
“I don’t know just how far we’re going, but I’ve got a general idea of the direction,” Sam told the others, who appeared to be willing enough to follow his lead and take chances. So they set out, with Sam at the head of the straggling line, laying his course in part by aid of a pocket compass he carried, and in part by certain landmarks known to all of them.
The route scorned roads, mostly, crossing fields and woods, climbing low hills and dipping into little valleys, edging away from the lake and carrying the party into a region with which they had slight acquaintance. They passed a few farmhouses, but most of the time were out of sight of habitations; for the country thereabouts was thinly settled. The pace was leisurely. The boys had all day before them, and there was plenty of opportunity for Sam to have a confidential word or two, now with one of his friends and then with another.
Orkney, for example, was beginning to worry about the Trojan, in coaching whom he had been especially active of late.
“It’s getting harder to keep him up to the mark,” he explained. “No; I don’t call it a case of quitting—it’s more of a case of not caring. You see, down at bottom the Trojan feels that he wasn’t given a square deal, and the thing rankles. He appreciates the trouble the club is taking for him, and has tried to do his part; but, somehow, he’s no real heart for the job. He doesn’t care—there’s the rub; and that sort of thing makes a difference, when you’re in for a long pull like this one. Oh, I guess he’ll stick it out in a way—go through the motions, anyway, you know—but if we’re to hold him with the class, there’s got to be something to spur him up, and it’s got to come pretty quickly.”
Sam nodded, and his expression grew serious. His opinion was much like Tom’s. The Trojan needed a mental bracer of some sort, but how it was to be found he could not conjecture. As for himself, he had Lon as counselor in seasons of depression, but Lon had not tried to deal with Walker.
Then Tom fell back, and presently Poke drew up with the leader. He was still in his mood of depression, and Sam had to make talk without marked response for a time. At last, though, Poke showed some animation. Curiously, it was mention of Jack Hagle which stirred him.
“It’s a funny thing to say,” he remarked, “and maybe you’ll think I was jarred off my trolley, but when the machine crashed into the bushes and I came that cropper through them, what impressed me most was the way Zorn and Hagle acted. Now, so far as the suddenness of it went, I might have dropped a couple of miles from the clouds; but that pair behaved as if the thing that bothered ’em was not the question whether I was killed or not, but how much I noticed of the thrashing Zorn was giving Jack. I figure if they were so anxious I shouldn’t know about it that, somehow, we were mixed up in whatever caused their row.”
“Isn’t that rather a far-fetched notion?”