The High School Boys' Fishing Trip Part 24

"Are you good and strong this morning?" queried d.i.c.k, with a smile.

"Strong enough to walk, anyway," Dan retorted.

"Then perhaps you're strong enough to paddle back across the lake and bring over two more fellows. Then, when you get back here, leave one of the pair here in the canoe, and we will get them to keep it a hundred feet or more off sh.o.r.e. We don't want our craft destroyed. And be sure, Dan, that the fellow who stays behind on the other side of the lake understands that he's to stick right by the camp and watch it for all he's worth."

"I've got my orders," clicked Danny Grin, with a mock salute.

"Then let's see how well you can paddle alone."

Dalzell gave a few swift, strong turns of the paddle that sent the light canvas canoe darting over the water.

"Now, come along," urged Tom. "I'm anxious to get busy this morning."

First of all, the two high school boys walked up the lake sh.o.r.e for some distance, keeping their eyes wide open and all their senses on the alert. Then, returning, they walked for a considerable distance down the sh.o.r.e.

"There are our reinforcements coming," announced Tom, pointing across the lake. "Danny and his load will be here within fifteen minutes."

"We'll wait for the other fellows, before going away from the sh.o.r.e," d.i.c.k proposed. "If we started now they wouldn't know where to find us."

Returning to the landing place, d.i.c.k silently waved his hat until he caught the attention of Dave Darrin, seated in the bow of the canoe, who answered the signal just as silently.

Presently the craft came up to the sh.o.r.e.

"Who's going to stay in the canoe?" d.i.c.k inquired.

"I am," Harry Hazelton declared dolefully. "We drew lots on the other side. Greg drew the shortest twig, so he had to stay at the camp. I got the next shortest twig, so my job is boat-tender."

Dave and Dan stepped ash.o.r.e. Heaving a sigh, Harry paddled out on the lake some hundred and fifty feet from land.

"Now, how are we going to beat up the country on this fine July morning?" Tom wanted to know.

d.i.c.k stood looking at the surrounding ground.

"I think I know as good a plan as any," he announced, after a pause. "Dave, you and I will walk down the lake, using our eyes and ears. Tom and Dan will go in the opposite direction. Each pair will keep along until our watches show that we've been going ten minutes. Then we will walk up the slope a hundred steps and turn toward the centre, meeting probably about the end of the second ten minutes. After that, if we decide to do so, we can go further inland from the lake. If there's a house or hut, or any fellow camping out in this neighborhood we ought to find him without much trouble. What do you fellows say to my plan?"

"It's about as systematic as anything could be," Dave agreed.

"But what if one pair of us find something?"

"We'll try our best to communicate with the other pair," d.i.c.k rejoined. "Suppose, Dave, that you and I run into something interesting and don't want to leave it? Tom and Dan, not meeting us at the appointed place, will know enough to keep right on over our course until they find us."

"That looks plain enough," nodded Reade thoughtfully.

"All right, then," d.i.c.k declared. "Now we'll start."

He and Dave started off at a swinging gait. The first time Prescott turned to look behind him Reade and Danny Grin had already vanished.

d.i.c.k kept close to the sh.o.r.e, Dave moving in a parallel line a few steps up the slope.

"There isn't any hut, lodge or camp down there," Dave called softly, "or else we'd have seen it from our camp on the other side of the lake."

"I know it," d.i.c.k nodded. "What I'm trying to do is to see if I can find any hint, on the sh.o.r.e, of how that fellow landed yesterday, without Tom or Danny catching sight of him. Of course, a very clever swimmer could have gone quite a distance under water.

and I want to see if I can find any sign of anything that would have hidden his landing from the fellows in the canoe."

"Oh!" nodded Dave understandingly.

The full ten minutes of searching pa.s.sed without the slightest trace of a discovery.

"Halt," d.i.c.k called up smilingly. "Now, join me, Darry, while I count off the hundred steps up the slope."

This done, the chums started backward, keeping a course as nearly parallel with the sh.o.r.e as was possible.

"Now, try to be keener than ever," d.i.c.k urged, as Dave paced off another twenty steps higher up. "We're in a growth of deeper forest, with a bigger tangle of underbrush and it will be easy enough to overlook something."

The two boys trudged on. They were five minutes on their way back, perhaps, when d.i.c.k heard a sudden scrambling in the underbrush not far away. Then Prescott caught sight of a human figure, yet so fleetingly that he could have given no description of it.

"Is that you, Darry?" he called sharply.

But it wasn't, for no answer came back, save for the slight sound of someone going through the brush farther on.

"Dave! Darry!" shouted Prescott. "Here! Quickly!"

Then d.i.c.k dashed on in pursuit, calling again and again until Dave came in sight and joined in the chase.

"What was it?" panted Dave, as he came within hailing distance.

"Someone running away from me," d.i.c.k explained.

"What did he look like?"

"I didn't have a chance to see. Let's travel hot-foot."

Yet presently d.i.c.k halted. Dave stopped beside him.

"We've pa.s.sed him; he has doubled on us," uttered Darrin in a tone of intense chagrin. "We belong in the primary cla.s.s in wood lore."

Then, suddenly, they heard a slight noise again. Forward they dashed. Now they came out to a place where the ground was more open. Before the two high school boys rose a great boulder of rock, its front sloping backward, and running up to a height of fifty feet or more. They had already seen this boulder from the water.

"That fellow ran into the open, but he didn't have time to cross it," announced d.i.c.k in a tone of conviction, as the pair halted at the foot of the boulder. "He could have gone up this side; there are crevices enough for foothold. But in that case we'd have seen him."

Dave stood plucking absent-mindedly at the leaves of a bush in a clump that grew at the foot of the boulder. Suddenly d.i.c.k glanced down, noting that his feet were on boggy ground, though the surrounding soil was firm enough.

"Is there a spring running out of the solid rock?" wondered d.i.c.k, reaching out and pulling one of the bushes forward.

Then he gave a sudden shout of discovery:

"Look here, Dave! We're on the track of it! These bushes conceal the mouth of a cave! This is where our fugitive has gone!"