CHAPTER VIII.

AN UNEXPECTED REPROOF.

“Hist, old man!” Dick Bellamy whispered, slipping out of his bunk. “Something is up, and I can’t make out what it is. Don’t say anything,—just keep quiet and use your ears.”

Alec, strangely thrilled, listened intently. The sounds Dick had heard, and which now came to Alec distinctly, consisted of a muffled scraping outside the side wall of the cabin, at the window. Some one was working at the catch.

It was long after “taps” and all the other scouts of the Otter and the Fox patrols were sound asleep in the cabin; that is, all save Alec, who, being restless because of a troubled conscience, had been startled by the vision of his friend bending over him in the darkness.

“What d’you think it is?” was Dick’s question.

“Go to sleep again, Dick; it’s nothing,” Alec retorted scornfully. And the next instant he marred the effect of his own words by asking: “What on earth do you suppose it can be?”

“A bear, perhaps,—or the mate of Hugh’s bobcat.”

“Nonsense! There are no bears around here, Joe says, and you ought to know that a bob——”

“Speak lower, Alec. It may be one of those Canuk lumberjacks from the camp in the back-woods. You remember, Pioneer Camp was robbed last summer, and there was a row over the affair.”

“You certainly have a lively imagination, Dick! Do you think a thing like that is going to happen again so soon?”

“Well, why not? You can’t trust any one of those toughs. I heard cook say so once, and then he shut up like a clam ’cause he thought Joe might hear him. Joe’s respected father was a Canuk, you know. Someone is up to some treachery.”

The last word grated upon Alec’s ears. “Treachery?” he repeated. “You mean——? You accuse—Joe?”

“You were foolish to show off that roll of bills your father sent you to buy camera supplies with, this afternoon,” was the whispered response.

Alec gave a low laugh.

“What’s eating you, Dick, anyway? You’re twice as foolish to talk that way. Joe might hear you. Besides, he’s as honest as the daylight. Do you think the Chief would employ him if——”

“Hark! There’s that noise again. I’ll bet someone is stealing into the cabin.”

“Why doesn’t he steal in through the door, then?”

“Afraid he’ll make too much noise, I guess. He’d rather take his chance of coming through a hole in the wall.”

“He’s making more noise than he would by using the door,” said Alec. “We’ll nail him when he gets inside. If it’s some of the fellows from the other cabin, Dick, we’ll force them to——Get up, then, and get ready for business.”

Silently the two lads swung to a sitting posture on the edge of their bunks, and, with straining eyes, peered through the thick gloom toward the wall from which the muffled sounds were coming. Suddenly, as they watched and waited, the lower sash of the window,—which, by the way, was next to Alec’s bunk,—was raised slowly, and a man’s head and shoulders appeared against the lighter background of silvery moonbeams. This human figure silhouetted itself sharply in the opening, evidently not striving for concealment, and an arm was thrust through. It seemed to be groping around in the darkness of the log-house, and finally a hand rapped softly on Alec’s bunk, almost touching his leg.

Alec crawled to the foot of his bed, slipped down, and stepped to Dick’s side. Dick also rose, and the two moved noiselessly upon the prowler.

The man grunted and breathed hard, while crawling through the window. Just as he was on the point of tugging at Alec’s pillow, both Alec and Dick seized him. Like a flash, he turned, without making a sound; it seemed that he was astounded, for a moment.

Yet his amazement was quite apart from the surprise of the unexpected seizure. A gurgling laugh sounded in his throat.

“You got me! You th’ boy I want to see,” he chuckled, turning to Alec.

The moonlight fell full upon his swarthy face.

“Joe!” gasped Alec. “What are you doing here at this time of night?”

“Want to see you,” explained the half breed, in a whisper.

“Me? What for? Why didn’t you tell me what you want after we got back yesterday?” Alec’s nervousness betrayed itself in the tones of his voice. “You could have spoken to me last evening at the council-fire. What’s the——?”

“No time then, no time to-morrow.”

“That’s so. I forgot we—the signal corps—are going to Oakvale to-morrow. The Chief told us last night, Dick, that Major Brookfield invited us to join his headquarters’ staff of signalers in the maneuvers, and so we’re going to the National Guard camp for a few days. Major Brookfield was in Oakvale yesterday, and the Chief saw him there. The major was pleased with the signal work we did during the fire.”

Dick Bellamy heard only a few words of Alec’s news. He kept his eyes fixed upon the face of the guide, wondering if by any unlucky chance Joe had overheard any of the insinuations which he, Dick, had uttered. At heart Dick was afraid of “Injun Joe,” as he called him—behind his back.

“Want to see you, Alec,” repeated Joe, moving toward the door, which, as Alec and Dick had forgotten, was locked on the inside. “Come out with me—out there.”

Something authoritative in his voice and manner made Alec obey without protest. Unbolting the door as noiselessly as possible in order not to waken the sleepers, and leaving Dick to crawl back to his bunk, the Indian and the white boy glided out into the open space between the two cabins, and stood facing each other in the moonlight.

“Joe find somethin’ to-day,” began the guide, fumbling in the pocket of his coat.

“Something of mine? Something that belongs to me?”

“No.”

“Why do you give it to me, then?”

“Becos you’re a scout, becos Joe a scout, too!” Joe’s unusually stolid features relaxed in a grim smile. “You no un’erstan’?”

Clad only in his pajamas, Alec shivered; but not entirely because of the chill night air on his body. The presence of the man before him, the vague reproach conveyed in Joe’s softly guttural tones, gave, him a curious “creepy” sensation of cold and a weakness in the knees.

“What-what is it?” he questioned, extending his hand.

“Here. You take this.”

Joe handed the boy a small, thin, oblong thing that felt damp and gritty to Alec’s touch.

“What is it? What shall I do with it? Oh, Joe, is it that book of trout flies you promised to sell me?” asked Alec eagerly.

Joe grunted, and gave his broad shoulders an expressive shrug.

“Wait,” he mumbled; “wait and see.”

Whereupon, with another shrug, he turned and strode rapidly away in the direction of his tent.

Alec looked down at the object in his hand. In the moonbeams he could scarcely make out what it was, for it was covered with mud-stains. Mechanically he opened it and turned what seemed to be pages soiled and crumpled and badly torn. All at once he uttered a little exclamation of astonishment.

“Oh!” he breathed. “It’s Hugh Hardin’s note-book!”

* * * * * * * *

When the signal corps reached the camp of the National Guard, late in the following afternoon,—having made the trip over to the Oakvale meadows on foot as far as Rainbow Lake, and thence in Tom Walsh’s farm wagon,—they were at once taken to Major Brookfield’s quarters and introduced to that officer. He received them with a genuine cordiality that straightway won their hearts, and he assigned them to the Blue Army.

“There is to be a sham battle next Saturday,” he told them, “and the Blues feel that they will be beaten because they are fighting the regulars, who compose the majority of the Reds, though they, the Blues, outnumber their foes. I want you boys to do all you can to save the day. Who is the leader of this corps, Lieutenant?”

“We have not yet elected a leader, Major Brookfield,” answered Scout Master Denmead, “owing to the fact that we hadn’t time, before coming here, to apply the last test which I had decided upon. You see, we left camp rather hurriedly this morning, in order to be here on time for the beginning of the maneuvers.”

“I understand. Well, it won’t make any difference, anyway. Perhaps the work these lads are going to do with us may be counted further toward some one’s election.”

“That’s an excellent idea.”

“The first ‘job’ you’ll have,” continued the Major, addressing his attentive listeners, “is to go out ahead with a detachment of Blues and help lay telegraph wires. I presume most of you are pretty well grounded in elementary surveying?”

The scouts replied by saluting.

“Well, then, follow my aide here, and he’ll put you in charge of the captain.”

In orderly array, the eight scouts of the signal corps left headquarters and were duly presented to the captain in command of the detachment of Blues. Their work began that very evening, for they were ordered to proceed from camp and take possession of a high mound east of the village, a strategic point which the Reds coveted, because it commanded telegraphic communication with Oakvale.

By the time this mound had been scaled and captured, after a skirmish with a few Red defenders, the eight new recruits, albeit thrilled by their first experience of mock warfare, were thoroughly tired. Wrapped in their blankets, they stretched themselves on the grassy slope of the mound.

“We’re safe enough here, and we can be comfortable,” said Alec to Walter Osborne.

“Good fun, this,” was Walter’s sleepy comment. “I’m going to sleep with one eye open.” He pulled the blanket over him, and yawned. “Forty winks for me, this night!”

“Forty-four thousand, you mean! I have a life-size picture of you sleeping with one eye open, after all we’ve been through to-day! Well, I’m dog-weary. Good night, old scout, and pleasant dreams.”

“Same to you, Alec.”

“You fellows shut up and go to sleep!” came Cooper Fennimore’s voice: out of the darkness. “Hi, there, Arthur! Quit punching me in the ribs!”

“Never touched you,” protested Arthur, in a drowsy drawl.

“Hugh, why so silent?” demanded Sam.

“Hugh is studying astronomy, fellows,” Blake Merton declared.

“No, I’m not,” said Hugh. “I was just thinking that ’way off in Pioneer Camp ‘taps’ is sounding now, and Billy the Wolf is wishing he were here with us. Good old Billy! Hope he wasn’t _very_ much disappointed about not making the corps.”

It was characteristic of Hugh Hardin to wish that his chum might share adventures and good-fortune with him.

Suddenly, across Alec’s drowsy consciousness stole a slight jealousy of Billy Worth. Never had he felt this before; never had he wished that he and Hugh might be friends with no indifference on Hugh’s part toward him, and no hostility on his own. Surely if Billy Worth, whom Alec really liked, found Hugh worthy of respect and regard, Hugh must be a friend worth claiming. Yet what had he done to make of Hugh a friend? Nothing. On the contrary, he had been guilty of a mean and selfish act which, if Hugh suspected it, could not easily be forgiven.

“A scout is friendly. He is a friend to all and a brother to every other scout.”

So ran the fourth law which Alec had promised to obey when he took the scout oath. And how had he kept that law? By treachery to another!

“Guess I must be tireder than I thought,” he told himself, trying to account for these disturbing reflections. “If I want to, I can return Hugh’s notes to him when we go back to camp; they’re hidden in my locker now. I suppose Joe meant that it was up to me to return them. Why didn’t he do it himself? It would be more like him, the sly dog! I wish he had! I don’t want to return them; they’re so much better than mine. Oh, well, perhaps——“

But here his brain and body seemed to yield all at once to the overpowering spell of tired youth, and he sank into dreamless slumber.