The Boy Scouts at the Canadian Border

“Oh! thank you for saying that, Rob,” Tubby burst out with, as his face radiated his happy state of mind. “For myself I wouldn’t mind if we just stuck it out here for a whole week, and let Uncle George find us. But then that wouldn’t be doing the right by my father, so we’ll have to keep on hunting.”

“I don’t mean to get much further away from the boundary,” continued Rob, “for what we saw yesterday bothers me. There’s certainly some desperate scheme brooding; that’s as plain as anything to me.”

“Just to think,” said Tubby, looking around him with a trace of timidity on his ruddy face and in his round eyes, “we may be close to a nest of terrible schemers who mean to do something frightfully wicked, and get poor old Uncle Sam in a hole with the Canadian authorities. Rob, supposing this job is pulled off, and those Canadians feel mighty bitter over the breach of neutrality, do you think they’d march right down to Washington and demand satisfaction? I heard you say they had raised a force of three hundred thousand and more drilled men, and that beats our regular army.”

“I guess there’s small chance of such a thing happening, Tubby,” laughed Andy. “You can let your poor timid soul rest easy. In the first place nearly all the three hundred thousand men have already been sent across the ocean to fight the Germans in the French war trenches, or else they are drilling in England. Then again our cousins across the border are far too sensible.”

“Don’t worry about that a minute,” he was told. “What we must keep in mind is that our patriotism may be called on to prevent these men from breaking our friendly relations with our neighbor, that have stood the test of time so well. If only we could find your Uncle George, Tubby, we’d put it up to him what ought to be done.”

“But even if we don’t run across him,” ventured Tubby bravely, “I guess we’re capable as scouts of taking such a job in hand of our own accord; yes, and carrying it through to a successful culmination.”

“Hear! hear!” said Andy, who liked to listen to Tubby when the latter showed signs of going into one of his periodical spasms of “spread-eagleism” as the thin scout was wont to call these flights of oratory.

So the morning passed away, and while they had not covered a great extent of territory by noon, at least the boys had kept up a persistent search for signs that would tell of the presence near by of the abandoned logging camp.

CHAPTER VI

THE LOGGING CAMP

It was along toward the middle of the day when Rob announced welcome news. He called a halt, and as the other pair stood at attention the scout master turned on Tubby with a look that thrilled the stout chum exceedingly.

“What is it, Rob?” he gasped, the perspiration streaming down his fat cheeks in little rivulets, for the day had grown a bit warm after that chilly night. “I know, you’ve run across signs at last?”

“Speak up, Rob, and give us a hint, please,” urged the hardly less impatient Andy.

“I wanted to see if you fellows were using your eyes, first,” explained Rob; “but Tubby seemed to be searching his inward soul for something he had lost; and, well, I imagine Andy here was figuring on what he wanted for his next meal, because neither one of you at this minute has thought it worth while to take a good look down at your feet. Right now you’re standing on the sign!”

They began to cast their eyes earthward. Andy almost immediately burst out with:

“Whee! an old long-disused tote-road, as the lumbermen call the track where the logs are dragged to the rivers, to be later on put behind a boom, and wait for the regular spring rise! Am I correct, Rob?”

“Straight as a die, Andy; this is a tote-road,” replied Rob.

“But what good is that going to do us, I’d like to know?” ventured Tubby, groping as usual for an explanation. “We don’t want to go to any river, that I know of. What we’re itching to find is the logging camp.”

“This track is going to bring us to it, sooner or later,” asserted Rob, with conviction in his tones. “I can give a pretty good guess which way the logs were taken along here, from the signs that are left on the trees and the bushes. Anybody with half a mind could tell that much. Very well, we must follow the track back, and keep watch for another road showing where the horses were daily taken to their sheds at the camp. I imagine it’s going to be a simple enough solution to the puzzle, boys.”

Andy was delighted. Tubby, having been convinced that the leader knew what he was talking about, managed to enthuse. Truth to tell, Tubby was yearning for the delightful minute to arrive when he might toss down that heavy pack of his for good and all, since they expected to go out of the pine woods much lighter than they came in.

They determined to sit down and eat a bite of lunch. After that they would again take up their task, the rainbow of promise glowing in the sky ahead of them.

“Have we gone a great distance away from the border, do you think, Rob?” Andy was asking, while they devoured such food as could be prepared quickly over a small fire.

“Well, that’s something I can’t exactly say yes or no to,” came the answer. “I don’t know where the dividing line comes. According to my reckoning we ought to be about as close as we were last night. In fact, I should say we are now exactly opposite the long bridge over on the Canadian side of the border.”

“But how could that be, Rob, when we’ve been doing considerable walking since breaking camp this morning?” demanded Tubby incredulously, but more as a means for increasing his stock of information than because he entertained the least doubt concerning the statement made.

“Our tramping hasn’t covered over half a mile in a direct line, because we went over a zigzag course,” replied the leader. “If you remember, whenever we heard a whistle for the bridge, it came from the west, showing that the structure lay farther that way.”

“Sure, you’re on the job when you say that, Rob!” exclaimed Andy, who had been an interested listener. “Only twenty minutes ago we all heard a rumbling sound, and decided it was made by a long freight train passing over the trestle leading to the bridge. It came from a point exactly opposite to us. You wouldn’t want any better proof than that, Tubby.”

So they chatted, and ate, and passed half an hour. Then Rob said it would be well if they once more went forth. That tote-road was an alluring object to Rob; he wanted to prove his theory a true one.

Once more they began to “meander,” as Tubby called it, through the woods, which had begun to thin out considerably, since most of the better trees had been cut down years back, and in places the ground was almost impassable with the wreckage of dead branches. Fortunately no fire had ever run through this region to complete the devastation begun by the axes of the lumbermen.

It could not have been more than half an hour later when Rob announced that he had discovered where the horses were in the habit of leaving the tote-road and following a well-defined trail through the brush and scant trees.

“Keep a lookout for the camp, fellows!” he told them, whereat Tubby began to elevate his head and sniff the air with vehemence.

“I thought I caught a whiff of pine-smoke,” he said, “but I must have been mistaken. Still, as the air is in our faces, it wouldn’t be strange if we did get our first indication of the presence of the lumber camp through our well developed sense of smell, rather than by reason of our eyesight.”

“Wrong again, Tubby,” chuckled Andy. “Eyes have it this time; there’s your camp ahead of us. Look over the top of that clump of brush, you’ll see the flat roof of a long log shanty, which must be the bunk-house of the lumber jacks in the days when they spent a winter here chopping.”

Even Tubby agreed with Andy after he had shaded his eyes with his hand and taken a square look. The thought that they were finally at the end of their search for Uncle George was very pleasing, and Tubby laughed as though a tremendous load had already been taken from his shoulders.

“Why, it wasn’t such a great task after all,” he remarked, as though he had never once dreamed of being despondent.

“Wait,” cautioned Rob. “Don’t count your chickens before they are hatched, Tubby. It’s poor policy to be too sanguine.”

“But Rob, didn’t you just say that was the camp?” pleaded the other.

“No doubt about it, Tubby. But possibly the person we’re wanting to interview may not be in the place,” reminded the scout master.

“What makes you say that, Rob?”

“Oh! I’ve got a sort of suspicion that way,” responded Rob. “In the first place we haven’t heard a single gunshot since arriving in the vicinity of this place yesterday, and that alone looks queer. Then we can see the roof of the bunk-house, with the mud and slat chimney in plain sight; it’s after the noon hour, too, and the chances are there’d be more or less cooking going on if the place were occupied, but so far as I can make out not the faintest trace of smoke is flowing from that homely chimney.”

Tubby, staring hard again, saw the truth of these assertions. He heaved a heavy sigh and shook his head dismally.

“Tough luck, I should call it, if Uncle George has never been here at all, and ours is going to be a regular wild-goose chase. Whichever way can we turn, Rob?”

“There you go jumping at conclusions, hand over fist, Tubby,” said Andy quickly. “Rob doesn’t mean that at all. Why, stop and think how your uncle was so very particular to mention that communications of importance sent to this camp would get to him in due time. He’s handling some big business, and couldn’t afford to drop out of the world entirely, even for two weeks. If he’s left here be sure we’ll find something to tell us where to look for him.”

“Come along and let’s see,” urged Tubby, “they say the proof of the pudding lies in the eating. Inside of five minutes or so we ought to know the worst, or the best. I’ll try and stand the shock, fellows.”

Once more they advanced. They could not always keep in a direct line on account of the obstacles that beset their course, so that Tubby’s estimate of the time required to reach the deserted logging camp proved erroneous; but by the end of ten minutes the little party drew up before the door of the long cabin which they understood had once sheltered a score of those rough wielders of the ax known as lumber jacks.

Some of the other rude buildings constituting the “camp” were in various stages of decay and in tumble-down ruin, but the bunk-house seemed to have been more substantially built, for it looked as though intact.

Before they arrived all of the boys had made a discovery that increased their haste to reach the door. There was some sort of paper fastened to it, and Rob had a pretty good idea as to what it would turn out to be.

“Uncle George has gone away from here, and left directions where to look for him,” announced Andy promptly, showing that he, too, had made a guess concerning the nature of that notice on the door.

“Shucks!” Tubby was heard to grunt, at the same time giving his burden an impatient flirt, as though almost in a humor to rebel against another long siege of packing it over miles and miles of dreary pineland.

But a surprise, and a pleasing one at that, awaited them all as they found themselves able to decipher the writing on the paper.

It proved to be a business sheet, with Uncle George’s printed address up in the left-hand corner. He himself had written the message in a bold hand, which any one capable of reading at all might easily make out; and this was what the trio of scouts read: