"Go ahead, scout, prevent my doing anything I want to do--if you can!"

he flung out, his brown eyes winking upward with that snapshot quickness as if he were photographing on their retina the figure of that new species of animal, the scout of the U.S.A. "I've heard of your kind before; you know a lot of things that n.o.body else knows--or wants to know either!"

The last words were to the accompaniment of the goading stick which began to move vehemently to and fro in the hole again. That neat little hole, which had been one of the humbler miracles of the woods, now gaped as an ugly, torn fissure beneath its roof of rock.

Before it was a defacing debris of torn gra.s.s and earth in which Blink scratched impatiently, whining over the delay in the chip-squirrel's exit.

"Oh! give it up, Leon; I believe I can hear him stirring in the hole!"

pleaded Colin Estey.

Simultaneously the scout flung himself on his knees before the chipmunk's fortress, well-nigh captured, and seized the cruel goad.

"Let go of this stick or I'll lick you with it! I can; I'm as old--older than you are!" Leon was now a red-eyed savage.

"That would be like your notion of fair play! Oh! drop the stick an'

come on with your fists! I'm not afraid of you."

The probable result of such a duel remains a problem; any slight advantage in age was on Leon's side, but each alert movement of the boy scout showed that he possessed eye, mind, and muscle trained to the fullest to cope with any situation that might arise. Whoever might prove victor, the expedition to Varney's Paintpot would have been abruptly frustrated by a fight among the exploring party, had not Marcoo the tactful interfered.

"Oh! what's the use of fighting about a chip'?" he cried, thrusting a plump shoulder between the bristling combatants. "It's just this way, Leon: Nix is right; it's a mean business, trying to force that chipmunk out of its hole for the dog to catch it! You can withdraw the stick right now, come with us an' share our luncheon; or you can go off on your own hook--and you don't get a crumb out of the basket--we'll find the Paintpot without you!"

Leon drew a long wavering breath, looking at Colin for support.

But Public Opinion as represented by the two younger boys, was by this time entirely with the scout. For it is the genius among boys, as among grown-ups, who voices what lies hidden and unexpressed, in the hearts of others; we are always moved by the bold utterance of that which we have surrept.i.tiously felt ourselves.

Both Colin Estey and Marcoo had known what it was to feel their sense of pity and justice outraged by Leon's persecuting methods. But it needed the trained boldness of the boy scout to put the sentiment into words; to be ready to fight for his knightly principles and win. For he had won.

Leon Chase fairly writhed at the choice set before him--at the necessity of yielding a point to the stranger! But he felt that it would be still more obnoxious to his feelings to be deserted by his companions, left to beat a solitary retreat homeward with his dog or wander--alone and fasting--through the woods, a boy hermit!

"All right! Have your way! Come along," he cried crossly. "We'll never get anywhere--that's sure--if we waste any more time on a chipmunk!"

Withdrawing the stick from the enlarged aperture, he flung it away and scrambled to his feet, whistling to the dog.

It needed much moral suasion on the part of all four boys to lure the terrier away from the raided hole with whose earth his slim white legs were coated. But he presently consented to explore the woods further in search of diversion.

And the incident ended without any torn fur flying its flag of pain on the summer air.

The flag of feud between the two boys, Starrie Chase and Nixon, was not, however, immediately lowered. Coombsie--a studious, thoughtful lad--had the unhappy feeling of having brought two strange fires together which might at any moment result in an explosion that would be especially disastrous on this the first day of his cousin's visit to him.

But as one lad has remarked: "Two boys cannot remain mad with each other long: there's always too much doing!"

And everybody knows that sawdust smothers smouldering fire! It did in this instance. After about ten minutes of "grouchy" but uneventful tramping, the forest explorers came to a logging camp, a rude shanty, flanked by a yellow mountain of sawdust where a portable sawmill had been set up during the preceding winter and taken down in spring.

In spite of the fact that so much lay before them to be seen in the woods--if haply they might arrive at the various points of heart's desire--it was not in boy-nature to refrain from scaling that unstable, shelving sawdust peak for a better view onward into those shadowy woods.

And a l.u.s.ty sham battle ensued, in the midst of which Leon found occasion to repay the trick played on him with the pitchfork seeds by slipping a handful of sawdust inside the scout's khaki collar.

"Whew! that's worse than the devil's pitchforks," groaned the latter, writhing and squirming in his tan shirt.

But does not a trifling discomfort under such circ.u.mstances enhance while curbing the enjoyment of a boy, tying him to earth, when his young spirit like an aeroplane, winged with sheer joy of life and youthful daring, feels as if it could spurn that earth sphere as too limited, and, riding on the breeze of heaven, seek adventure among the clouds?

In such a mood the four boys, drinking in the odor of the pine-trees as a fillip to delight, were presently exploring the loggers' shanty, with its rude bunks, oilcloth-covered table, here an old magazine, there a worn-out stocking, relics of human habitation.

"n.o.body occupies this camp during the summer," said Leon. "I think Toiney Leduc and another man worked up here last winter."

"I'm pretty sure that Toiney did! Look there!" The scout was unfolding a piece of charred paper pinioned in a corner by a tomato can; it was a printed fragment of a French-Canadian _voyageur_ song, at sight of which the boys made the shanty ring with:--

"Rond! rond! rond! peti' pie pon' ton'!"

"But I'm not so sure that n.o.body is using the shanty now," remarked Nixon presently. "See that tobacco ash and the stains on the white oilcloth!" pointing to the dingy table. "Both look fresh; the ash couldn't possibly have remained here since last winter; 'twould have been blown away long ago by the wind sweeping through the open shanty.

There's some more of it on the mattress in this bunk," drawing himself up to look over the side of the rude crib built into the wall. "I guess somebody _does_ occupy the camp now--at night anyway!"

"Oh! so you set up to be a sort of Sherlock Holmes, do you?" jeered Leon.

"I don't set up to be anything! But I can tell that the men ground their axes right here." The scout was now kicking over a small wooden trough that had reposed, bottom uppermost, amid the long gra.s.s before the shanty.

"How can you make that out?" It was Colin who spoke.

"Because, look! there's rust on the inside of the trough, showing that there are steely particles mixed with the dust of the interior and that water has dripped into it from the revolving grindstone."

"Pshaw! anybody could find that out who set to work to think about it,"

came in a chorus from his three companions.

But that "thinking" was just the point: the others would have pa.s.sed by that topsy-turvy wooden vessel, which might have been used for sundry purposes, with its dusty interior exactly the hue of the yellow sawdust, without stopping to reason out the story of the patient axe-grinding which had gone on there during winter's bitter days.

"But, I say, what good does it do you to find out things like that?"

questioned Starrie Chase, kicking over the trough, his shrewd young face a star of speculation. "If one should go about poking his nose into everything that had happened, why! he'd find stories in most things, I guess! The woods would be full of them."

"So they are!" replied the scout quickly. "That's just what we're taught: that every bird and animal, as well as everything which is done by men, leaves its 'sign!' We must try to read that 'sign' and store up in our minds what we learn, as a squirrel stores his nuts for winter, so that often we may find out things of importance to ourselves or others.

And I'll tell you it makes life a jolly lot more interesting than when one goes about 'lak wit' eye shut'! as Toiney says. I've never had such good times as since I've been a scout:--

Then hurrah for the woods, hurrah for the fields, Hurrah for the life that's free, With a heart and mind both clean and kind, The Scout's is the life for me!

And we'll shout, shout, shout, For the Scout, Scout, Scout, For the Scouts of the U.S.A.!"

The speaker exploded suddenly in a burst of song, throwing his broad hat into the air with a yell on the refrain that woke the echoes of the log shanty, while the breezy orchestra in the tree-tops, like noisy reed instruments, came in on the last line:--

"For the Scouts of the U.S.A.!"

Colin and Coombsie were enthusiastically shouting it too.

"Say! Col, that fellow suits me all right," whispered Marcoo, nudging his chum and pointing toward the excited scout.

"Me, too!" returned Colin.

"Pshaw! he thinks he's It, but I think the opposite," murmured Leon truculently.

"To what troop or patrol do you belong, Nix?" questioned his cousin.

"Peewit Patrol, troop six, of Philadelphia! I was a tenderfoot for six months; now I'm a second-degree scout--with hope of becoming a first-cla.s.s one soon. Want to see my badge?" pointing to his coat. "Each patrol is named after a bird or animal. We use the peewit's whistle for signaling to each other: Tewitt! Tewitt!"