CHAPTER XXIII.

THE SMOKE CLEW.

"Bear nothing!" exclaimed the scout who held the gun.

He had instinctively elevated the weapon at the first sound of alarm from his ally; and had it been necessary Giraffe was in a position to have given a good account of himself, for he was known to be a somewhat clever shot.

Just in time, however, he had managed to get a better view of the creature that Davy had stumbled upon, losing his balance in his excitement.

"What was it, then, Giraffe, if not a bear? Don't tell me it was a dog," demanded the other, having righted himself after his somersault.

"Didn't you hear him grunt as he ran away?" asked the lengthy one contemptuously; for he might have pressed the trigger of his gun only that just in time his ears had been greeted with the sound in question.

"Grunt? Great Cæsar's ghost! was that a _hog_?" almost shrieked Davy.

"Just what it was, a dun-colored hog, and a rousing big critter in the bargain, let me tell you, Davy. I saw him as plain as anything, and he ran back of us, you noticed, so we won't be apt to raise him again in a hurry."

"But what'd an old grunter be doing out here, tell me, Giraffe?"

"Shucks! how d'ye think I'd know?" returned the other. "Expect I'm up in the hog lingo just because I did say I always wanted to understand crow talk? Why, for all we know, that hog's been living here since last summer; or else he's another flood victim, and got washed up like we did. They're all doin' it, you know."

"Well, well, who'd expect to run up against a porker?" Dave went on to say, as he sought to grasp the full significance of the adventure, having by now recovered from the shock the sudden surprise had given him. "And Giraffe, if a hog this time, what next will we run across? P'raps there might be chickens, and cows, and all sorts of things close by? Mebbe the old island's inhabited, after all."

"One thing sure," Giraffe went on to say, in a satisfied tone, "this beats out Robinson Crusoe by a whole lot."

"As how, Giraffe?"

"Is there any comparison between hogs and goats when it comes to making a good dinner?" demanded the other. "Why, don't you see what this means to us, Davy? No use talking about going hungry as long as there's such noble hunting on this little patch of ground. Me to bag a prize hog, when the right time comes. Hams, and sweet little pork chops, and smoked shoulders--oh! we could live a week off that buster, believe me."

He smacked his lips, as though the prospect gave him unlimited pleasure. Davy himself had known the time when the slaughter of a three-hundred pound hog afforded no occasion for showing more than passing interest; but that was when starvation did not stare him in the face. Circumstances alter cases; and he was almost as much excited over the outlook now as the always hungry Giraffe seemed to be.

"How do we know that this place we've been calling an island isn't connected with the mainland?" was Davy's next suggestion.

"How d'ye mean?" demanded his ally, as they started on once more.

"Why, there might be some sort of a link, you see, a sort of isthmus, so to call it, along which the hog made his way, and where we could skip out of the trap; how about that, Giraffe?"

"Nothing doing, Davy," came the scornful reply; "didn't we see that the river ran past on both sides like a mill race? Well, it wouldn't do that if the way was blocked by a strip of land, would it? Not much. We're marooned on a sure-enough island, and you can't get around that. Course we might run across a cow yet; same time we'll keep our eyes peeled for a breadfruit tree, and coffee bushes, and truck gardens. Nothing like being hopeful through it all."

"Can hogs swim, Giraffe, do you happen to know?"

"Well, you get me there," returned the other. "I never saw one doing the same; but seems to me I have heard of such a thing. They can do nearly anything, and so swimming may be on their list. I only hope the old chap don't take a notion to clear out of here before I get a crack at him, that's all."

"I was only going to say that we might capture the old grunter, and hitch him to a log on which the whole lot of us perched, making him tow the same ashore."

Of course Giraffe understood Davy was only joking when he said this, but he chose to pretend to take it seriously.

"If you leave it to me to choose, Davy," he went on to say gravely, "I'd prefer to have those hams and the bacon, and take my chances of paddling ashore afterward. Besides, I don't believe we've got anything to make harness out of, so your great scheme would fall kind of flat. Give that bunch of bushes another whack with your club while you're about it, will you? We want to clear up things as we go along, so we'll know the job's been done gilt-edged."

"Looks like that's an open place ahead, Giraffe," ventured Davy, after he had complied with the request, and found nothing.

"Yes, it does seem that way, Davy, and p'r'aps now we'll have a chance to look around a bit when we strike it. I was just wondering whether the river could have been up over all this island any old time in the past, and here's the evidence of the same."

He pointed to what looked like drift stuff caught in the crotch of a tree. It may have been lodged there years back, but anyone with observation could readily see that it had been carried to its present location by a moving current.

"As true as anything, Giraffe, and there must have been three feet of water over the highest ground on the island then. Lucky the rain stopped when it did, or we might be perched in trees right at this minute."

"That's what Thad was saying, when he told us it was never so bad but what it might be a whole lot worse. Think of the bunch of us being compelled to roost in trees day and night, till somebody came along in a motorboat and rescued us. Well, for one, I'm glad things didn't get quite that bad."

As they drew closer to the open spot they could see the other scouts advancing on their right, and covering the ground. They exchanged signals, and in this way learned that nothing had thus far been seen of those for whom they were searching.

Thad drew them together at this point.

"From here on we'll be much closer," he told them all, "because it looks as though the end of the island must be just a little ways off, and it seems to come to a point like the upper end. Look over there, what do you call that?" and he pointed directly ahead as he spoke.

"Smoke!" announced Old Eagle Eye instantly.

Everyone was ready to confirm his announcement, after they had taken a look.

"And as there couldn't be smoke without a fire, and no fire unless some human hand had started it," the scout master continued, in his logical way, "it looks as if we might be closing in on those we're hunting for, Wandering George and his pal."

"Well, since they've had a fire that means the finish of our grub," commented Giraffe; "but then, it's only what we expected; and, Thad, there's a great big hog on this island--no, don't laugh, because I'm not referring to Bumpus now. I mean a real porker, a whopper of several hundred pounds weight. Davy stepped on him, and I could have knocked the beast over as easy as turning my hand. So we don't need to have any fear of being starved out, if it gets to the worst."

"That sounds good to me, Giraffe, and I can see that you're not joking," Thad told him. "We heard some sort of a row over your way, but thought it was only one of you tripping over those creepers. A hog may not seem like very fine company, but that depends on conditions. Just now we'll be glad to know him, and to offer him the warmest seat close by our fire. Fact is, we'll take him as a companion, and let him be one of us. Now, let's make our line again, for we want to push down toward that fire below."

"There's another patch of scrub ahead, before we get to the point of the island, and we might lose our game in that if we didn't keep the net drawn across, for a fact," admitted Allan, who of course recognized the wisdom shown by the leader in continuing the carrying out of his plan.

Once more they separated, but this time it was not necessary to put much ground between them. When the line had formed all eyes were turned toward Thad. He waved his hat, which was the signal to begin the advance; so again each scout moved on as before, examining every possible cover for signs of the enemy.

They had thus made a clean sweep of the island. Rabbits may have escaped them by hiding in crannies among the rocks; and squirrels could have remained aloft in their nests inside hollow limbs of trees, or secreted amidst the foliage of the evergreen hemlocks; but certainly no larger object had evaded them.

As they continued to close in on the spot where the smoke arose, the scouts very naturally felt more or less the thrill of excitement. They knew full well what it meant, for many times in the past the same queer sensation had almost overpowered them.

This chase had been in progress long enough now to have aroused their hunting instincts. That the old blue army coat should eventually be returned to the judge was to most of them a small affair, for they of course did not know the real reason why its recovery mattered to the former owner; but they had somehow set their hearts on accomplishing the object they had in view. And the more difficulty they met with in doing this, the stronger their desire grew.

The trees became more sparse, so that before long they caught glimpses of the fire itself. It was not burning very briskly, though sending off considerable in the way of smoke, a fact that convinced the scouts these hoboes knew nothing concerning woodcraft, and the habits of Indians in making fires of certain kinds of dry fuel that hardly send up any smoke at all.

Now the scouts, having finished their "combing" process, began to gather together for the final rush. They had reached the open ground, where no object half the size of a man could evade them, so they felt they need have no fear of either one of the hoboes passing by.

"I see one of them lying there, like he might be asleep, Thad," whispered one of the scouts; and of course it could be taken for granted that it was Giraffe, of the eagle eye, who spoke.

"The second fellow may be on the other side of the fire, back of the smoke," remarked Step Hen; but somehow neither Thad nor Allan could believe this, because the smoke was drifting that way, and they knew very well no one willingly places himself on the leeward side of a smudge like that, suffocating in its effect.

The further they crept the more concerned did Thad and the Maine boy become. They could see the sleeping tramp by now, and it was with more or less uneasiness they realized the fact that he must be other than Wandering George. Besides, not the first sign of the blue army overcoat did they discover anywhere.

While thus preparing to close in on the sleeping tramp, and give him a very unpleasant surprise, the scouts were feeling stunned over the mysterious disappearance of the man they had been following so far, and whom they felt sure must have been on that very island only a comparatively few hours before.

Thad kept hoping that the second hobo would start up from some place when they made their presence known; and it was in this expectation that he finally swung his hat, which started his five companions on a hasty run toward the smoking fire.