"Why, it was this way," Billy hastened to explain. "You see I was down by the water cleaning all those fish at the time. Guess I must have been pretty much a whole hour at the job. And I'd just about finished when I thought I heard somebody give a sneeze, which made me get up off my knees and look around."

"And did you see the tramps in camp cleaning things out then?" asked Felix.

"Well, no, not exactly," replied Billy; "the most I thought I saw was something moving in the bushes on the other side of the camp; and yes, it was just like a laugh too that I caught."

"What did you do?" asked Josh.

"I wondered if those wild dogs had come back," said the guardian of the camp, "and the first thing I thought to do was to put the pan of fish I'd cleaned up in the crotch of a tree. Then I went to the camp, and oh! my stars I but it was in an _awful_ mess, with things flung around, and most of our eatables taken, as well as the frying-pan and coffee-pot!"

"Oh! that's sure the limit!" groaned Josh. "We'll never be able to keep on our hike with nothing to eat or drink, and not a pan to cook stuff in, even if we bought it from the farmers. It spells the end, fellows!"

"Yes," echoed George, always seeing the worst side of things, "we'll have to go back to town like dogs with their tails between their legs, and have all the other fellows make fun of us."

"Hold on there, fellows, don't show the white feather so easily," said Tom, who was looking very determined.

"Do you mean there's any chance for us to keep going, after our things have been taken in this way?" demanded George.

"Well, we can talk that over to-night, and then see what Mr.

Witherspoon has to say about it when he joins us in the morning," Tom told him. "As for me, I'd be willing to go on half rations rather than own up beat. How do we know but that this raid on our stuff was made just to force us to give up our hike?"

"Why, how could that be?" asked Billy b.u.t.ton, wonderingly.

"And why would hoboes want that to happen?" added George.

"When Billy says they were tramps he's only jumping to conclusions,"

Tom explained, "he doesn't know a thing about it, because he owns up he failed to get even a single look at the thieves. I've got my own opinion about this thing."

"Meaning you believe you know who the fellows were?" questioned Carl.

"Stop and think--who would like nothing better than to put us in a hole? Don't we happen to know that Tony Pollock and his crowd are around here on Big Bear Mountain somewhere? Didn't they rob that hen roost of Mr. Perkins?"

"Tom, I really believe you're right!" exclaimed Josh, beginning to look at the matter from the standpoint taken by the patrol leader.

"We can soon settle that part of it!" declared Rob Shaeffer.

"By hunting for their tracks, and finding out how many thieves there were," Tom went on to say. "Come on Billy, and show me just where you saw the bushes moving when that laugh struck you."

He called upon the others to keep back so that they might not spoil any tracks to be found at that particular spot. A very little search showed the boys what they so eagerly sought.

"Here are tracks enough, and all heading away from the camp," said the patrol leader presently, "let's see how we can cla.s.sify them, for every footprint will be different from the others."

"Here's one that is square across the toe," announced Josh, instantly.

"And say, seems to me I remember Asa Green always wears shoes like that. Now Wedge McGuffey has got broad shoulders and spindle legs, and he wears a pointed shoe like the one that made these tracks."

"Here's another that's got a patch across the toe," said Felix.

"Couldn't mistake that shoe, no matter where you saw it. A fellow could be hung on such circ.u.mstantial evidence as that."

"And here's a fourth that's different from any of the rest," continued Tom, as he pointed downward, "so it looks as if there were just four in the bunch, which you may remember corresponds with the number in Tony Pollock's crowd, now that Dock Phillips has thrown his lot in with them."

Some of the scouts expressed their indignation loudly as they investigated the results of the daring raid. It would not have been pleasant for Tony and his cronies had they been brought face to face with the angry scouts about that time.

Tom Chesney soon had reason to admit that he had met with a personal loss that bothered him exceedingly.

"They've even taken my little diary in which I've been keeping an accurate account of our entire trip," he announced; "though what good that could do them I'm at a loss to understand."

"Oh! they just believed it would make you feel bad," explained Carl; "and that would tickle Tony, he's such a mean sort of fellow. Perhaps he expects to read it out to the others while they sit by their fire, and then throw it away. I hope you can write it all over again, Tom."

"Too bad!" declared Josh, "when you went to such trouble to jot everything down just as it happened, thinking you might take that prize offered for the best true account of a hike by scouts."

"I'll make sure to write this latest adventure out while it's fresh in my mind," remarked Tom, bent on making the best of a bad bargain.

"Well," observed Felix, "all I hope is that we decide not to give up the ship for such a little thing as being without provisions. It'll make us hustle some to lay in a supply; but, after all, the experience is going to be a great thing for us."

"And if it comes to a vote," added Horace, showing unexpected stamina in this emergency; "count on my voice being raised against giving up.

Why, I'm just getting interested in this game, and I find it pretty exciting."

"Just what I say!" echoed Josh.

"And I!" came from every one of the others, without even the exception of poor Billy, who seemed to feel that he might be mostly to blame because the raid on the camp had been conducted while he was in charge.

Tom smiled on hearing so unanimous an expression of opinion. He knew that even such an apparent catastrophe as had befallen them was not going to cause these gallant fellows to "take water."

"How long ago was it that the raid took place, Billy?" asked Josh, as though a sudden idea had struck him.

"Oh! I should say about an hour or more," replied the other, after thinking it over. "I suppose they watched the camp for a while to make sure I was the only one around. Then when they saw me so busy down there by the pond they just started to root. They may have been poking around half an hour, for all I know; I was keeping my eyes on my work and thinking of poor Walter."

"Tom, would it pay us to follow them right now?" demanded Josh, while his eyes sparkled with the spirit of retaliation, as though he could picture them pouncing on the spoilers of the camp, and making them pay dearly for their frolic.

The patrol leader, however, shook his head in the negative, much to the disappointment of the impetuous Josh.

"In the first place they were apt to hurry off," said Tom. "Then they might even try to blind their trail, though I don't believe any of them know much of the Indian way of doing that. But the sun will soon set, and it grows dark early along the northeast side of Big Bear Mountain you know."

"Yes," added George, always ready with an objection, "and some of us feel a little tired after all we've gone through with to-day."

"We'd better leave that until Mr. Witherspoon joins us in the morning,"

concluded Tom. "Of course that wouldn't prevent a couple of scouts following the trail a bit while breakfast was cooking, and saving us that much trouble later on."

"The next thing for us to see about is how under the sun will we cook all these delicious ba.s.s Billy's got ready?" remarked Felix.

"Oh! I forgot to tell you they missed one frying-pan," remarked Billy, exultantly; "it chanced to be hanging from a nail I drove in a tree, and they couldn't have seen it. By making relays we can do our cooking in that."

"Besides, we're two shy of our original number," added Horace.

"What would we have done without any skillet at all, Tom?" asked Billy.

"Oh! there are ways of doing it by heating a flat stone, and cooking the fish on that," replied Tom. "Then some old hunters who won't bother to carry a frying-pan into the woods with them manage by toasting the meat or fish at the end of a long sliver of wood. Given the fish and a hot fire, the fellow who couldn't invent some way of cooking would deserve to go hungry."

"That's right," agreed Josh. "And everybody notice that it's going to take more than a little thing like this to stall the scouts who are up to their business."