Excerpt
CHAPTER I. THE BIRCH-BARK MESSAGE.
"Hold on, boys; here's a stick standing upright in the trail. And look, fellows, there's a piece of nice new birch bark held fast in the cloven end, that grips it like the jaws of a vise."
"Say, it's a message, all right."
"And from our crack-a-jack pathfinder, Elmer Chenowith, too, I warrant you."
"What do you say, Matty? Is Red Huggins right?"
Seven boys had come to a halt in the heart of the big woods. They were a rather husky-looking set, all told, and evidently bent on getting all the benefit possible from being outdoors through the last few weeks of vacation time.
The one appealed to, Matty Eggleston by name, was something of a leader among the Hickory Ridge Troop of Boy Scouts.
In fact, he was at the head of the Beaver Patrol, and studying constantly in order to attain the rank of a first-class scout.
There are so very many things a boy must know in order to reach this ambition that comparatively few scouts ever attain it. But by concentrating all his energies upon one particular study he may earn a merit badge, which it will make him proud to wear.
Matty took the piece of bark from the cloven stick. The other six boys clustered eagerly around, anxious to see what sort of message it could be that the assistant scout master had left in the trail.
They were out to try a new experience, and one that appealed to every boy in the bunch.
A party of the scouts, their identity and number unknown to Elmer and the balance, had started off for the woods early in the day.
An hour later, Elmer, with one companion, had taken up the trail, and when a second hour had elapsed the balance of those who were bent upon playing the game left town in two detachments.
It had been arranged that Elmer was to act as pathfinder and tracker. He would in turn leave a plain trail that a child could follow.
Besides this, he had promised to transmit from time to time some sort of message. Thus those who came along in the rear, in two detachments, would be kept in touch with events, and also advised as to what they should do.
The party bringing up the rear was headed by Mark Cummings, who was Elmer's particular chum. He was really the bugler of the troop; but for this occasion Elmer himself carried that instrument, with the idea of calling the scouts together at some time later on.
"Hey, look at that, would you; it's all marked up with crow's feet tracks!" exclaimed Landy Smith, a rather fat boy who had only recently joined the Wolf Patrol, making the eighth and last member.
"What's Elmer think we are, a lot of kids, to leave us an illustrated rebus to guess? Looks to me like a little boy's first try to draw cows and Noah's Ark people."
Some of the others laughed when George Robbins gave expression to his disgust in this way. George was a cousin to Landy, and had also recently signed the muster roll of the scouts, although he belonged to Matty's patrol, the Beaver.
"You've got a heap to learn yet, George," said Red Huggins, shaking his head at the offender....