CHAPTER V
"YOU MUST LOOK OUT!"
The four boys did not linger long before that lonely grave; the fears itevoked were too unpleasant. They pushed on again through the woods, eachone clearing his throat of a husky tickling that was third cousin to aweary sob.
The scout was inwardly combating the depressing memory of Toiney Leduc'swarning with the advice of the Chief Scout that if he should ever findhimself lost in the woods, Fear, not hunger or cold, would prove hisworst enemy.
"I mustn't lose my grip! I must keep my head--not be fogged by fear! I'ma boy scout of America," he reminded himself.
Still the shadow of that gray cairn stalked him as well as the others.Even Leon was subdued by it. His manner had lost the last trace of itsshallow cocksureness. The mantle of bluff had melted from him, leavinghim a distracted, temper-tried boy like his three companions.
"I know that the cave called the Bear's Den is not quite a mile fromBishop's grave, but I haven't the least idea of how to go aboutreaching it," he admitted. "A logging-road passes the cave; that mightlead us somewhere. I wish we could strike a stream."
"So do I! My mouth is dry as dust; I'm parched with thirst." Nixon, ashe spoke, stooped, picked up a round pebble, inserted it between his drypalate and tongue and began sucking on it, as on a gum-drop.
"What on earth are you doing that for?" questioned Leon sharply; thenerves in his tired body were now jangling like an instrument out oftune; together with his three companions he was cross as a thorn--readyto quarrel with his own shadow.
"'What am I doing it for?' Why! to start the saliva," quavered thescout, sucking hard; "to prevent me from feeling the thirst so much."
"_Blamed_ rubbish!" Starrie Chase snorted. "As if sucking a stone like ababy would do you any good!"
"Everything is 'rubbish,' except what you know yourself; and _that's_next to nothing!" Nixon was now equally cross. "You don't know half asmuch about the woods as your dog does. If it hadn't been for you, we'dhave been out of this place long ago!"
"Oh! you think you're It, because you're a boy scout, but I think theopposite!"
"Shut up! Don't give me any of your 'jaw'!"
But there was a sudden, queer contortion of the scout's face on the lastword.
Abruptly he stalked on, humming to himself--a curious-looking being,with his painted face and dazed eyes under the broad-brimmed hat.
"What's that you're singing, Nix?" Coombsie was catching at a straw todivert thought from Bishop's grave.
"Oh! go on, let's hear it. Sounds lively!" urged Leon, whose temper hadsunk beneath the realization of their plight, a quenched flash.
The scout sidetracked his pebble between right cheek and gums and beganto sing with what cheerfulness he could muster, as much for his ownencouragement as that of his companions, a patrol song, the gift of apoet to the boy scouts of the world:--
"Look out when your temper goes At the end of a losing game; And your boots are too tight for your toes, And you answer and argue and blame! It's the hardest part of the law, But it's got to be learned by the scout, For whining and shirking and 'jaw,' All patrols look out! These are our regulations, There's just one law for the scout, And the first and the last, and the present and the past, And the future and the perfect is look out!"
Before Nixon had finished the chorus his three companions were shoutingit with him as a spur to their jaded spirits.
"Ours is a losing game in earnest--all because we didn't look out andtake proper precautions so that we might have some chance of returningby the way that we came," remarked the soloist with a grim laugh. "Now,we 'jolly well must look out!' as the song says. I'm going to climb thenext tree that's good an' tall, and see whether I can discover anyfaraway smoke that would show us where a house might be,--or a gap inthe woods,--or anything."
"Good idea! I'll climb too," seconded Leon. "You choose one tree; I'lltake another, and see what we can make out!"
But they were toiling through a comparatively insignificant part of thefine woods now, where the foamy undergrowth billowed about their ears.Here the birch-trees, hickories, and maples, with an occasional pine andhemlock, only averaged from thirty-five to forty feet in stature. Notfor another half-mile or so did Nixon sight a tall stately trunktowering above its forest brethren, its many-pointed leaves proclaimingit to be a fine red oak.
"Whoo'! Whoo'! It's me for that oak-tree!" he cried. "I'll shin up that,right to the top and scour the horizon. 'Twill be easily climbed too!"
"See that freak pine with the divided trunk a little farther on? I'mgoing to climb that," announced Leon Chase. "It's a fine tree, if it isa freak--like the Siamese Twins."
In another minute with the agility of a cat he had climbed to the crotchof the freak tree where its twin trunks divided.
"Look out! those lower branches are brown an' rotten, Starrie. Iwouldn't trust to them if I were you!" shouted Colin, indicating thedrooping pine-boughs about ten feet from the ground; he kicked a similarlarge drab branch, as he spoke, which had fallen and lay decaying at thefoot of the freak tree.
"Right you are! I won't." Leon was a wonderful climber; twining his armsand legs round one olive-green trunk of the divided pine he managed toreach the firm boughs above through whose needles the late afternoonbreeze crooned a sonorous warning.
The scout, meanwhile, had clambered like a squirrel nearly to the topof the splendid oak-tree. Presently the two boys upon the ground heard ashrill "Tewitt! Tewitt!" the signal-whistle of his peewit patrol, fullysixty feet above their heads, followed by Nixon's voice shouting: "Can'tsee smoke anywhere, fellows--or any sign of a real break in the woods.But there seems to be some sort of little clearing about two hundredyards from here, I should say!" He was carefully scanning the space overintervening tree-tops with his eye, knowing that if he could judge thisdistance in the woods with approximate accuracy it would count as apoint in his favor toward realizing the height of his ambition andgraduating into a first-class scout.
Leon, a moment later, was singing out blithely from the pine-tree's top:"I see that gap between the trees too, just a little way farther on. Iguess it's a logging-road at last--probably a shanty as well--the roadwill lead somewhere anyhow. Hurrah! We'll be out o' the misery in time.Race you down, Nix?" he challenged exuberantly at the top of his voice.
Then began a swift, racing descent, marked on Leon's part by the touchof recklessness that often characterized his movements; he wasdetermined that though the boy scout might excel him in certain pointsof knowledge, he should not outdo him in athletic activity.
"There! I knew I could 'trim' you anywhere--in a tree or on the ground,"he cried all in one gasping breath as--caution to the winds--he steppedon one of the lower dead boughs which he had avoided going up.
It snapped under his hundred and twenty-five pounds of sturdy weight,like a breaking twig. He crashed to the ground, alighting in a huddleupon the decayed branch, the crumbling wind-fall, at the foot of thetree.
"Gracious! are you hurt, Starrie?" Coombsie and Colin rushed to him.
"I--think--not! I guess I'm all here." Leon made a desperate attempt torise, and instantly sank back, clutching at the grass around him withsuch a sound as nobody had ever heard before from the lips of Leon StarrChase--the moan of a maimed creature.
"My ankle! My right ankle!" he groaned. "I twisted it, coming down onthat rotten branch. It feels as if every tree in the woods had fallen onit together! Ouch! I--can't--stand." Drops of agony stole out upon hisforehead.
"You've sprained it, I guess!" Nixon was now bending over the victim."Here, let me take your shoe off, before the foot swells! Perhaps, withCol and me helping you, you can limp along to that clearing?"
Leon made another attempt, with the leather pressure removed, but sankdown again and began to relieve himself of his stocking too, in order toexamine the injury.
"Ou-ouch!" he groaned savagely. "My ankle is as black as a thundercloudalready. It feels just like a thunderstorm, too--all heavy
throbs an'lightning shoots of pain!"
The trail of those fiery darts could be traced in the livid blue andyellow streaks that were turning the rapidly swelling ankle, in whichthe ligaments were badly torn, to as many hues as Joseph's coat, againsta background of sullen black.
"Well! this is the--limit!" Coombsie dropped the lunch-basket, to whichhe had clung faithfully, into a nest of underbrush: with a probablelogging-road within reach that might serve as a clue to lead themsomewhere, here was one of their number with a thunderstorm in hisankle!
And then the hero that dwelt in the shadow of the savage in thatcontradictory breast of Leon Chase flashed awake again in a moment, asat Big Swamp; the real plucky boyhood in him shone out like a star!
"'Twill be dark--in the woods--before very long," he said, his voicesprained too by pain, while his clammy face, still coated with thered-ochre pigment of Varney's Paintpot, smeared by the drops of agonyand his coat-sleeve, was a lurid sight. "You fellows will have to hustleif you want to reach that road--if it is a logging-road--and get out ofthe woods before night! I can hardly--hobble. I'd better stay here:Blink will stay with me; won't you, pup? When you boys get home--let myfather know--he and Jim will come out an' find me; they know every inchof the woods."
"And leave you alone in the woods for hours? Not I, for one!" Thescout's answer was decisive, so were the loyal protests of the other twolads.
Blink, with a shrewd comprehension that something was wrong with hismaster, had been alternately licking Leon's ear and the inflamed pads ofhis own paws. At the mention of his name he pressed so close to thevictim's side, sitting bolt upright on his haunches, that their twobodies might have been joined at one point like the trunks of the freaktree. And the purple fidelity lights in his brown eyes said plainlythat not hunger, thirst, or lonely death itself, could separate him fromthe being who was a greater fellow in his eyes than any scout of theU.S.A.
The other three boys were at that stage of fatigue and discomfiture whenthe well of emotion is easily pumped; their eyes grew moist at the dog'ssteadfast look.
But the scout shook himself brusquely as if trying to awake somethingwithin.
"We ought to be able to fix you up so that you can get along to thatlittle clearing, anyhow!" he said, his mind busy with the sixth point ofthe scout law and how under these circumstances he could best live up toit and help an injured comrade. "We might form a chair-carry, Col and I,but the undergrowth ahead is too thick; we couldn't wrestlethrough--three abreast. Ha! we'd better make a crutch for you; that'sthe idea! There's a birch sapling, neat an' handy, as an Irishman wouldsay!"
And the ubiquitous white birch, the wood-man's friend, came into playagain. Its slim trunk, being wrenched from the ground, roots and all,and trimmed off with Nixon's knife, formed a fair prop.
"Chuck me your handkerchiefs!" said the crutch-maker to the other twouninjured boys. "We'll pad the top of it, so that it won't dig into hisarmpit. Now then, Leon! get this under your right arm and put your leftone round my neck--that will fix you up to hobble a short distance."
A half-reluctant grin, distorted by agony, convulsed Leon's face as,leaning hard upon the white-birch prop, he arose and limped a few steps;he recollected how at odd moments in the woods--whenever there wasn'ttoo much doing--he had believed that he held a grudge against the scoutfor making him yield one sharply contested point and that about such aninfinitesimal thing in his eyes as the brief life of a chipmunk.
"Oh! I guess I can limp along with the crutch," he said, smearing thedew of pain over his bedaubed face, now ghastly under the paint.
"Go on; you're only wasting time!" Nixon drew the other's left arm withits moist cold hand around his neck--all the heat in Leon's body hadgone to swell the thunderstorm in his ankle.
And thus plowing, stumbling through the undergrowth, the scout's righthand keeping the impudent twigs from poking his companion's eyes out,they reached the narrow clearing along which the ambient light of aSeptember sunset flowed like a golden river.
No coveted log shanty, where at least they could encamp for the night,decorated it.
But on its opposite side there loomed before the boys' eyes as theyissued from the woods a great, lichen-covered rock, over twenty feethigh, with a deep cavernous opening that yawned like a sleepy mouth atsunset as it swallowed the rays streaming into it.
"Glory halleluiah! it's the Bear's Den--at last," ejaculated Leon, painmomentarily eclipsed. "Thanks, Nix: you're a horse!" as he withdrew hisarm from his comrade's shoulders. "But that cave is about five milesfrom anywhere--from any opening in the woods! What on earth are we goingto do now?"
"Why! light a fire the first thing, I guess," returned the boy scoutpractically.