CHAPTER VII.

THE HEART OF A SCOUT.

“That’s interesting news, Thad!” Step Hen declared.

“The way you say that makes me think you mean ‘interesting, if true,’” Thad remarked, with a little laugh. “In other words, you want me to prove it.”

“Oh! well, we’re all such a lot of slow-witted scouts that we have to be shown; just like we’d come from Missouri,” admitted the other, in a tone that was meant to serve as an apology.

“And I’m always ready to explain as far as I can,” the scout-master told him. “At the same time I have to keep an eye on Allan here, for you all know that when it comes to reading the signs of the woods I sit at his feet. What I pick up just by figuring out, he knows from past experience. So I want him to pull me in just as quick as he sees I’m on the wrong track; promise that, Allan.”

“Go ahead,” remarked the Maine boy, but his manner told plainly enough that he was very little afraid he would have to do anything of the kind.

“Of course,” Thad began, “all of you can see by the marks here that something was moving along toward our camp; and if you look a little closer you’ll notice that it was a man on his hands and knees; for here are the plain impressions of both his hands; while his shuffling knees made that mark, and that, and here is where his toes dragged along. Plain enough, eh, fellows?”

“As easy to read as A B C!” declared Giraffe, eagerly.

“Another thing is that he had just reached this spot behind the bushes at the time Giraffe let fly with his gun, and then we all started to shout; for you can see the tracks go no further. On the contrary, the man became suddenly frightened, under the belief that he had been discovered; for here he scrambled to his feet, as you can plainly see each impression of a bare foot, and as he hurried away he kept back of the low bushes, from which I deduce the idea that he must have stooped over in order not to be seen and fired on.”

“Well, it goes right along like a book, don’t it?” said Bumpus, looking at the young scout-master in admiration and wonder; for he could not imagine how any one, and a mere boy at that, could discover so much just from observation, and using his common sense at the same time.

Allan nodded his head approvingly.

“But chances are that isn’t near all you noticed, Thad?” he said, questioningly.

“You’re right, it isn’t,” said the other, promptly. “I can see from the signs that the man is barefooted, and consequently in great need; so I am compelled to believe that he must be an escaped convict who has been trying to keep life in his wretched body, perhaps for months, in this swamp, eating roots or berries, trapping birds, or catching fish, muskrats, turtles, anything that he can find. And as nearly all those who are held in these camps are blacks, I find it easy to guess that this is a negro.”

“Ain’t that a great way of finding out things, though?” marveled Bumpus. “Why, Thad, you talk just like you’d been watching that poor old chap every second of the time. I don’t reckon, now, that you could tell us anything else about him—how big he was, and all that?”

“He was a good-sized fellow, for you can see that the track of his bare foot is really tremendous; and if you look here you’ll notice where he lay flat on his face, so that it is possible to roughly measure his length—all of six feet, too. And his left hand is lacking one finger!” added the scoutmaster.

“What’s that?” gasped Step Hen. “You’re only joshing us now, Thad; for how under the sun could you tell such a thing as that?”

Allan chuckled, and looked immensely pleased.

“I thought so!” he was heard to mutter to himself.

“Well, it’s the old story of keeping your eyes about you,” remarked Thad, “and using your head as you go. Three separate times, now, I saw where he had placed his left hand spread out on the ground where it was soft enough to take a pretty good impression; and in every instance the _third_ finger was missing; so with all that proof I thought I was safe in assuming that this man was marked. And let me say, that later on when we get the chance I mean to ask a lot of questions just to satisfy myself about it. If a convict escaped from jail, or some camp, who has no third finger on his left hand I’ll consider that I’ve proved my case.”

Some of the boys were still a little skeptical, and asked to be shown those wonderful imprints of the hand that told Thad such an interesting story; but after they too had examined them they admitted that it was even so.

“It sure beats the Dutch how these things stick up with some fellows,” Bumpus frankly admitted, as he scratched his frowsy head in wonder, and almost awe. “Now, the rest of us looked right at them impressions in the mud. We saw they’d been made by a human hand, of course, cause there ain’t any monkeys around here besides Davy; but not one of us went any deeper. Why, after you’ve been shown, it stands out there like a mountain, and you see it as plain as you see your nose when you shut one eye. I wisht I could discover things that way; there’d be heaps of things I’d find out, let me tell you.”

“Yes,” said Giraffe, severely, as he moved away from the vicinity of Bumpus, his nose elevated at an angle of forty-five degrees; “but what we’re all hoping most for now is that you’ll hurry and get over that cold in your head, so that your natural sense of smell will come back; for then you’d certain sure duck out of that grimy old suit that’s just greased from top to bottom, and give us a chance to breathe the pure air.”

Bumpus looked at him pityingly.

“You do love to carry on a joke to the limit, Giraffe,” he said, simply.

“Joke?” burst out the other in a vociferous voice; “let me tell you, this is a mighty serious matter; and if it keeps along, some of us in desperation may be tempted to jump on you while you sleep, and make the change ourselves. We’re getting to a point where self-preservation is the first law of Nature.”

“Bah! who’s afraid?” retorted Bumpus, with a shrug of his plump shoulders; “but you want to keep your hands off me, for I’ll kick and bite like fun if set on. I know you’re just trying to see if you can’t convince me against my own good sense. This atmosphere seems all right to me; though I admit I don’t just like the looks of this black swamp water, and the ooze we meet up with sometimes.”

Giraffe gave him a last piercing look; then as if making up his mind that the case was utterly hopeless, he shook his head and turned away; while Bumpus went back to his camp duties as blithely as though care sat lightly on his head.

After they had finished breakfast the tents were struck, folded in as small a compass as possible, and one stowed away in each of the boats. Afterwards they cleaned up the camp, and made sure that nothing worth while was left.

There had been certain portions of the razorback that they did not mean to take along with them. Seeing Bumpus busily engaged Thad approached, asking:

“What are you up to here, old fellow? Just as I thought, trying to do a little favor for that wretch of a three-fingered coon, by tying up this meat where the animals will have a hard time getting at it. Yes, you guessed right that time, for the chances are he’ll come back here as soon as he knows we’ve gone, in the hopes of picking up some scraps we’ve tossed aside. Bumpus, you’re improving, because that shows you figured it all out, and hit the bull’s-eye in the bargain.”

The fat scout looked immensely pleased to hear Thad talk in this strain.

“Well, after eating such a jolly breakfast myself, it struck me as pretty sad we should be so near a miserable human being who was almost starved. No matter if he is a bad man, and deserves all he’s getting, he’s made like us, and I just reckon the lot of us would be quite as tough as he is if we’d never had the benefit of a nice home and education and full stomachs. And so I thought, as he’d be likely to come here, I’d save these pieces from the cats and skunks for him.”

“It sure does your big heart credit, Bumpus, and that is the way a true scout ought to feel pretty much all the time,” Thad went on to say, looking affectionately at his stout chum. “Now, if he only gets here soon enough, there’ll be red ashes in the bed of our fire, and he can start it up again, so as to do his cooking.”

“Oh!” said Bumpus, with a happy gurgle, “I thought all that out, too, Thad. See, here in this paper is half of my matches. I can spare ’em easy enough; and every one will be worth a heap to him, I guess.”

At that evidence of thoughtfulness Thad clapped his hand on the shoulder of Bumpus, and as he turned away remarked:

“They can talk about you all they please, Bumpus, and make fun of the onion odor about your old suit with more or less truth; but you’re certainly making better progress along the lines of scout lore than most of the boys who think themselves your superiors.”

And that sort of earnest praise made Bumpus beam with happiness all morning long.

The camp spot was deserted shortly after this little talk between Bumpus and Thad. And for some hours they continued to press slowly along, following such channels as Thad believed to be most promising.

All the time he kept in mind that they were trying to come across a man and a girl who were supposed to have a place of hiding somewhere in this swamp; and so he considered this fact every time he had to make any sort of choice concerning taking one channel or another, invariably selecting that which he fancied had been used more than the other.

He had to decide from mute evidence. It might be only a broken branch that told him a boat had possibly scraped against a bush in making a short turn; or the fact that he believed he could see a sort of regular line of marked places, as though some one besides themselves had resorted to the same means of blazing their trail in order to be able to go out whenever they felt inclined, without running the danger of losing their way among all those endless channels, and never being able to leave the confines of that horrible swamp.

All this while it had been getting worse and worse, the heavy growth enclosing them in a narrow canal at times, so that they had serious doubts as to whether they were doing the right thing, or had wandered far from the proper channel.

It was while they were pushing steadily onward that Bumpus, who was nodding as he lazily paddled, suddenly heard Thad in the stern cry in thrilling tones:

“Lookout, Bumpus, there’s a water moccasin just over your head on that limb, and acting like he’d drop in the boat. There! throw yourself back, Bumpus, quick now, I tell you!”