CHAPTER XIII

A THRILLING DISCOVERY

The light of Rob’s lantern showed them a boy of about their own age. He was half on his knees, and seemed to be caught in some way so that he could not get away.

“Why, he’s got his leg in a trap, don’t you see, Rob?” gasped Andy, filled with horror at the very idea, for it seemed to portend the most serious consequences.

“It does look like an old rusty bear trap!” Rob admitted as they hurried on; Zeb instantly corroborated what he said by exclaiming:

“Jest what she are, an’ no mistake. Jingo! I sartin sure hopes as how the boy ain’t bad hurted. I’ve seen men that was lamed fur life arter being ketched by the jaws o’ a bar trap. But this un seems old like, and mebbe the springs are weak.”

All the same the unlucky victim of the trap had apparently not been able to free himself.

“I’m right glad ye’ve come!” called out the boy, showing a wonderful amount of nerve. “I shouted till I could hardly call above a whisper, and I was nearly crazy with fear that I’d have to stay here till mornin’, when I heard you answer.

“Hurry, please, and get this old thing off me. Ye see I couldn’t reach the second spring nohow, try as hard as I might. It hurt something fierce whenever I twisted around that way.”

They were all bending down now. The first thing Rob noticed with a great feeling of relief, when he brought his lantern close to the prisoner of the rusty old bear trap, was that there were no signs of blood. This gave him fresh hope that the misfortune might not turn out to be quite so serious as he had at first anticipated; and also it proved that Zeb, a trapper of long experience himself, had hit the nail on the head when he said that the trap looked as if it might be old, and the springs weak in their action.

Apparently it had enough power to snap shut and hold fairly firm. Could the boy have borne heavily on both springs, he might have succeeded in effecting his release in the beginning.

Zeb immediately put his weight on the obstreperous spring. Andy pried back the unwilling jaws; whereupon Rob was able to take out the boy’s leg from the trap.

The boy rubbed his hand tenderly up and down his leg at the point where it had been seized. He gritted his teeth, and winced a little, but quickly exclaimed as if in deepest gratitude:

“Hurts some, but the bone wasn’t broken, and I’m unco’ lucky. What’s a black and blue bruise anyway? I can stand it, ye ken.”

With Rob’s help he managed to get on his feet, after which he immediately began to limp around, muttering to himself as he went, as though controlled by a mixture of emotions—thankfulness that it was no worse, gratitude because of the coming of these rescuers, and chagrin at having been caught in such a ridiculous situation.

Zeb meanwhile was examining the trap with the eye of an expert.

“Jest about worn out,” he was saying, “an’ she never’d hev held a bar in the wide world. Now, I wonder who put that no-good thing thar—no trapper as knowed his business, I’d say. Looks more like a kid’s work than anything else.”

“Yes, it was a boy,” explained the late victim, “and the funny part of it all is that I should have happened on to the trap my cousin Archie told me he’d kept set for a month, over near the old logging camp.”

“Archie was the lad’s name, was it?” demanded Zeb quickly. “I remember that Cameron, the guide I used to pull with, and who came up this way last summer to settle, had a lad by that name.”

“Well, Archie Cameron is my full cousin,” explained the stranger. “I’m Donald McGuffey, ye ken, and I live over the line in a Canadian village. I’d been visitin’ my relatives, and was on my way back home when this happened. Now I’m lame, and perhaps I can never get there in time to save them.”

“What’s that?” asked Rob suspiciously. “Are your folks in any danger? Did you get word that they were sick? Tell us what you mean, Donald, and if we can be of any further assistance to you we stand ready to do all we can, for we’re scouts, you know, and it’s our duty to hold out a helping hand every time.”

“Oh! but that’s fine of you!” cried the Canadian boy, shaking with emotion, which, of course, none of the others could as yet begin to understand. “Why, I’m a scout, too, though now I haven’t got my uniform on. But, oh! I wonder if you would dare take it upon yourselves as comrades to stand by me through this terrible thing?”

“Terrible thing, what, Donald?” almost shouted the aroused Andy. “Speak up and let’s know what it’s all about. Why should we hesitate about helping you out? Who’s going to hurt us for sticking to a comrade that’s in distress?”

“Those awful men—they would be furious if they knew any one meant to interfere. Yes, they would even do muckle mair than tie ye up. I believe, in my bones, they are that wrapped up in their diabolical scheme they’d murder anyone who tried to break it up!”

“Speak plainer, Donald,” snapped Rob. “We are wasting precious time while you throw out hints in that way. Tell us everything!”

The Canadian boy stopped limping around. He seemed to straighten up his figure, and they could now see that he was a tall and spare lad, as wiry as they make them over in the country beyond the border.

“It’s just this, ye ken,” he said earnestly. “They mean to blow up the bridge this verra nicht, in time to trap the regular munition freight that goes over at two in the mornin’!”

Rob and Andy exchanged horrified looks. Their worst fears were confirmed. Only for their having seen the evolutions of that spying aeroplane that crossed the line and hovered above the railroad embankment near where the trestle leading to the bridge lay, they might have been at a loss to comprehend what these startling words meant. But that much was very plain to them; in fact, as we have seen, Rob at least had been confident that the terrible plot had only been delayed, and not given up.

How had this Canadian boy learned of the truth? Plainly there was more for him to explain, though Rob could now understand the fearful mental suffering he must have endured, as well as the physical pain, on finding himself detained in that astounding fashion, when he was undoubtedly hastening as fast as he could go to carry his news to those guarding the threatened railroad.

“Come, tell us as quick as you can how you learned this, Donald,” said Rob. “Two days ago we saw an aeroplane cross over, and we guessed then that perhaps the pilot was spying out the land, for there has been some talk of plotters here in the States in sympathy with Germany, who were trying to blow up munition plants in Canada, or doing something just as dreadful.”

“Aweel, they’ve settled on destroying the long bridge across which so many loaded trains pass every twenty-four hours,” said the other hurriedly, and with bated breath, owing to his increasing excitement. “I happened to overhear them talking while on my way to the river, after saying good-bye to my cousin, who was sick abed. I knew they were up to something, for I saw that they had a small German flag, which each one of them kissed as they sat around the fire. So I crept close up and listened, oh! with my heart nearly in my mouth. I soon learned that they were sure enough enemies of my country, and that they meant to strike a blow against the Allies before another morning, that for weeks and weeks would paralyze all traffic flowin’ to the sea by this railway line.”

“It was a brave act in your crawling up and listening,” said the admiring Andy, as he laid a hand on the arm of the Canadian lad. “And make up your mind we’re going to stand by you through thick and thin, Donald. Scouts should help each other, and that, you know, means just what it says.”

“Go on and tell us the rest, please!” urged Rob.

“Why, after I had learned what they were scheming to do,” continued the other promptly, greatly pleased at hearing those generous words spoken by impetuous Andy, “I knew I must get alang, if I wanted to be ahead o’ the gillies. Ye ken I remembered hearing my cousin say he believed a Yankee sportsman and his guides would be over at the old logging camp; and sae I changed me course a bit, meanin’ to drap in and see if they would nae helpit me carry the news across the line. Then, bad luck to it all, I had to deliberately step into the auld bear trap my cousin Archie had tawld me that he put out here a wheen o’ time back.”

“It was doubly unfortunate,” said Rob, his voice full of sympathy.

“It made me verra mad, I assure ye,” confessed Donald frankly. “Try as I would I could nae get me leg free, nor could I yet reach the spring to bear down on the same. I stood the pain the best I was able whenever I reached out, but it was a’ no gude. And only for the luck o’ ye hearing my shouts there I must ha’ remained till the day came, and then it would ha’ been far too late. But now I hae telled ye a’ I must be on me way again, no matter how I hae to limp it.”

“Hold on, Donald, not so fast,” said Rob. “We are going with you!”

“Across the border, do you mean, Rob?” exclaimed Andy gleefully, for being of an adventurous spirit, nothing could have pleased him more than this.

“There seems to be no other way to foil those desperate conspirators. The Canadian authorities are none too friendly to us right now on account of numerous things that have happened and which they lay to German sympathizers crossing over secretly from our side. Yes, we must try to help our fellow scout do his duty to his country, which he loves just as much as we do our own native land.”

“Oh, it makes my heart fairly jump to hear ye say that! It’s braw lads ye air, baith o’ ye, and I’ll never forget it, never! My leg hurts, but I think it will get better after I use it a while. No matter how it pains me, I shall go on and on, even if I have to crawl and drag it after me, for I must carry the news to the guards. I would gie ten years o’ life if only there was a way to flash it across the border to them richt now.”

“First we must go back to the cabin,” said Rob.

“Is it necessary, then?” asked Donald anxiously, as though fairly wild to be on his way.

“Yes, because there are several reasons,” he was told. “We have a chum there who would never forgive us if we started on such a glorious expedition and left him behind. Then again, I have some salve that, rubbed on your leg, would do a lot of good and relieve the pain considerably. So let’s start.”

Donald may have had a good Scotch will of his own, but as he too was a scout, he had also learned to yield to those in authority. He seemed to guess intuitively that Rob _must_ be a leader, perhaps from his positive way of saying things and possibly from Andy’s deferring to his opinion.

They were soon hurrying along, Donald suppressing any groan as he continued to limp more or less.

“I hae not tauld ye all,” he was saying. “I learned from what I heard them say while I hid in the bushes that they expected to set a mine under the trestle and connect it with a battery by a long wire. Then from a distance they could destroy the bridge just when the heavy freight train was passing over. Ye can understand what I suffered when I tell ye that my fayther is an engineer in the employ of that same railway and that he pulls the munition freight this verra nicht!”