CHAPTER I.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS.

“Hi! you, Billy Worth!” cried the leader of the Wolf patrol, a tall youth of seventeen named Hugh Hardin, addressing his assistant. “Scramble out of that bunky, my boy, in two wags of a Wolf’s tail, or I’ll have scout’s law on you!”

“All right, chief! Coming!” was the prompt response, as Billy, thus adjured, turned over in his bunk and thrust one long leg over the edge.

His bare brown foot, dangling perilously near the head of another boy whose bunk was beneath Billy’s, proved too great a temptation for the lad. Pulling a whisp of straw from his mattress, he proceeded to tickle the sole of that foot, thereby causing Billy to elevate it hastily with a loud squeal.

As he did so, Hugh made a dexterous sweep of his arms, and, grasping Billy around the knees, almost flung him over one broad shoulder and deposited him none too gently on the floor.

“Ouch!” whooped Billy.

His shout and the dull thump of his fall aroused other inmates of the cabin who had not already wakened in time to witness the onslaught.

“Help! Murder!” yelled a scout of the patrol.

“Shut up!” another boy said, laughing, as he sprang from his bunk. “What’s going on here, anyway?”

“Not hurt, are you, old man?” inquired Hugh, a trifle anxiously, for he seldom cared to perpetrate practical jokes. “I didn’t mean to——”

No response from Billy. He lay where he had fallen, with one arm outstretched, the other pillowing his head. His face was covered by a limp hand, but between his fingers he slyly peeped out, and his twinkling eyes sought the serious face of Hugh, who was bending over him.

“Billy’s done for!” said the lad who had tickled him. “Let’s put him to bed, chief, for he will be happier there.”

Ignoring this facetious suggestion, Hugh bent still lower; he even dropped upon one knee, and put his hands on Billy’s shoulder.

“Wake up, son!” he urged, smiling and giving his chum a gentle shake. “First round is over, and in ten seconds you will be counted out.”

This was the chance for which Billy had been waiting. Now he saw that Hugh was completely off his guard. Suddenly his free hand shot out, grasped Hugh’s ankle from behind, gave it a strong push—and the next instant Hugh measured his length on the floor. Before Hugh could fully realize what had happened to upset his equilibrium, Billy gathered up his own sprawling limbs, and hurled himself upon his fallen leader.

“Down and out, am I?” he gurgled. “Who said so? Come on, we’ll——”

“Sure! We’ll see!” As he spoke, Hugh struggled free from the other’s hold, and met the reprisal with his usual jolly laugh. “Good for you, Billy! Good one on me! O-ho!”—he dodged nimbly a “half-Nelson” which Billy had vainly attempted—“none of your famous strangle-holds, now!”

Then ensued a rough-and-tumble match, the outcome of which was awaited in joyous suspense by every scout in the cabin. They all gathered in a wide circle around the wrestlers, showering liberal encouragement. Had the match been between Hugh or Billy and a member of the other patrol, however friendly, it might not have been greeted with the same impartiality.

The circle soon narrowed, for not more than three minutes elapsed before both contestants were down on their sides, facing each other. Hugh, being quicker and less stockily built than his chum, was the first to make a final overthrow. In a trice, he pulled Billy under him; and, though Billy put up a good fight, he crumpled flat under Hugh’s weight.

“You win!” he gasped. “Get off my arm,—it hurts!”

“Sorry, son,” said Hugh, when murmurs of applause had died away. “Shall I put you back to bed now?”

“No, thank you; I——”

Laughter greeted Hugh’s query, for Billy Worth bore an undeserved reputation of being a sluggard. On his part, he took the laugh good-humoredly.

“Is that what you call doing a daily good turn?” he inquired of Hardin, with a grin. “You’ve begun the day nicely, I must say!”

“_You_ did the good turn, old scout!” called Walter Osborne, of the Hawk patrol, from across the room. “I never saw a neater tumble!”

“I’ll take a fall out of you for that, Walt!” threatened Billy, cheerfully. “If we have archery practice to-day, you’ll miss a feather from your wing!”

“Hear! Hear!” came a chorus of voices.

“Fly at him, Walt!” urged one of young Osborne’s patrol.

“Go to it, beak and claws,” added another.

“Billy the Wolf’ll catch you if you don’t watch out!” chanted a third, in a sing-song voice, thumping his pillow as if to beat time to the words.

Neither Billy nor Hugh made any response to this friendly taunt. Hugh turned aside and, going to the rear of the room where a tier of lockers stood, numbered to correspond with the bunks, he drew out a pair of bathing trunks.

“Going for a swim before breakfast?” asked Billy, turning to a young fellow who appeared in the doorway of the cabin and paused on the threshold outside.

“Are you?” came the evasive answer.

“You bet! The Lieutenant gave us permission yesterday, and we’re off to the lake, bright and early.”

“I see,” remarked the outsider, glancing around the cabin, which was filled with boys in various stages of undress.

Something in the tone of his voice, a note of wistful bitterness, struck the ears of Hugh Hardin, who was standing near enough to overhear this brief colloquy. He looked up from the process of tying the strings of his shorts tight, and was on the point of making some remark, when, recognizing the visitor, he kept silence.

Billy Worth was not so tactful.

“Come along, Alec,” he urged. “The water’s fine!”

“Can’t.”

“Why not?”

“I’m on police duty, as punishment.”

“Punishment? For what?”

“Carelessness,” was Alec’s truthful, albeit sulky, reply. “Yesterday I dumped ‘Buck’ Winter out of a canoe,—though it wasn’t all my fault. The kid wouldn’t keep still, and he told me he could swim like a fish,—and he was nearly drowned.”

“Gee! That little piker! Why, he _can_ swim! Didn’t he capture two points from us last week, in the hundred yards?”

“Wrong again, Billy! It was his brother, who is the star swimmer of our patrol.”

“Well, your Otters put it all over us, Alec, in those water games.”

“That is why we are so glad to have morning practice,” added Hugh, in a tone which he honestly intended to be kind. “We Wolves want time to find out what we can do.”

“Buck must have lost his head,” remarked Walter Osborne, who had drawn near.

“He did,” said Alec, emphatically, “and he gave Chief Hardin a chance to qualify in first-aid—at my expense.”

There was no mistaking the resentment that underlay those words. Walt and Billy glanced uneasily at Hugh.

A flush stained Hugh’s bronzed cheeks and brow at the retort, and he turned away scornfully, biting his under lip. It was hard to keep his temper in control, as a scout should; but he managed to do so, and the next moment he was outside the cabin, filling his lungs with deep draughts of the pine-scented air and watching the mists roll up the side of the opposite mountain. With the coming of the sun, he was able to take fresh note of his surroundings, and his eager dark eyes dwelt fondly upon the familiar scene in the first light of a new day.

Indeed, it was a scene to stir any red-blooded boy. As far as Hugh could see through the lifting vapor lay the lake, a great silvery mirror reflecting the heavily wooded shores so clearly that the inverted forest appeared no less real than the original. From the shores of the lake, in every direction, hills sloped ruggedly up into mountains, for the most part clothed to their summits with the variegated green of a mighty woodland. The side of one of the nearer mountains was scarred by exposed ledges of bare rock, which, as Lieutenant Denmead, the Scout Master, had said, would make fine strategic points for the Signalers’ Game.

“We’ll try it some day this week,” he had told Hugh on the previous evening, as he sat with his assistant scout master, Rawson, and the leaders of the four patrols around the camp-fire.

Hugh recalled that vague promise now, as his gaze wandered from those rocky ledges to the deeper hollows not yet penetrated by the sun’s rays.

How dim and mysterious they looked! How Hugh longed to explore them and to discover, by means of such woodcraft as he had already learned, the treasures hidden in those shadowy nooks and ravines!

Several boys of his patrol followed him from the cabin. They saw that something had vexed him, but they made no comments, even among themselves. Presently they dashed away, down to the shore of the lake, where most of the boys from the other cabins were gathered. These boys belonged to the Otter and the Fox patrols.

Left alone for the moment, Hugh waited for Billy and Walter, to whom he had decided to make an explanation of Alec’s thrust. As they walked down to the lake together,—Alec having departed on his rounds to the chip-basket,—he told them how he had happened to be on hand to give assistance at the canoe accident.

“I didn’t help very much, really,” he finished, “and I don’t see why Alec should be so sore.”

“Oh, never mind him, Hugh; he’ll get over his grouch after a while,” declared Billy. “He is jealous of you because you qualified as a first-class scout before he did, and because you are in line for a merit badge as chief scout woodsman.”

“Hello, son!” exclaimed Walter, turning to greet an eager-faced boy, Number 8 of his patrol, who had trotted up behind them. “What’s eating you now?”

“Do-do you know why the Big Chief has called a m-m-meeting of the patrols this morning?” panted the boy.

“No, I don’t,” admitted Walter. “But we will find out after breakfast. Run along now, son, and mind: not more than ten minutes in the water!”

“All right, I’ll remember,” promised the younger boy, and he raced ahead several yards. Suddenly he stopped short, turned around, and waited for the trio to come up. “I-I say, Hugh, will you—will you do me a favor?” he inquired hesitatingly. “Will you coach me on the crawl?”

“Surest thing you know! That’s what I’m here for,” Hugh responded heartily.

A few more strides brought them to the shore of the lake, where they stood for a moment, watching a group of boys swimming out to the raft. Then, with a quick “Come on, now! Watch me!” Hugh leaped forward into the water, followed by Walter and Billy. The boy whom he was coaching stood knee-deep in the water, gazing with admiration not unmixed with envy at the powerful yet easy overhand strokes that sent the swimmer through the ripples without apparent exertion, yet at a speed that made his own best efforts seem hopeless. In another moment he, too, was breasting the lake, and soon he gained the raft and climbed upon it.

“That’s much better,” was Hugh’s brief comment, at which his admirer glowed with pleasure. Praise from Hugh, who was usually so reserved, was rare indeed!

Just as they were practicing swift dives, a bugle call rang clear and full across the water.

“The ‘recall’,” gasped Billy. “Wonder what’s doing?”

“That means everybody report at once,” said Don Miller, leader of the Fox patrol. “Back to shore, fellows.”

“Hit her up, son!” added Walter, and, suiting his action to his words, he slid rapidly through the clear water, leaving a wake of swirling ripples.

As soon as the swimmers reached shore, they hurried to their respective cabins, dressed, attended to their beds, and then repaired to the larger log-house, where a bountiful breakfast was served. During the meal the talk was all of the eagerly anticipated meeting of the patrols, and everyone wondered why it had been called.

Mess over, Don Miller and Walter Osborne took their stand at either side of the cabin door, and as each boy passed out he saluted the two chiefs with the scout’s salute, and was saluted in return. This was a point of etiquette upon which Lieutenant Denmead, who was a retired officer of the United States Army, always insisted, believing that it did much to maintain discipline and to instill the scout virtues of courtesy and of respect for superior officers.