Tom Slade on Mystery Trail Part 3

Doubtless Tom Slade, scout, was gratified to receive this valuable information. "And there's just the one way to get there, is that it?" he answered quietly, but smiling a little. "I always heard that a scout was resourceful and had two strings to his bow."

"You just give me a tip and I'll do the rest," said Hervey.

"It must be about tracking, hey?"

"That's it; test three for the stalking badge. _Track an animal a quarter of a mile._"

"Well, let me think a minute, then," Tom said.

"Up on that mountain, maybe, hey?" Hervey urged.

"Maybe," Tom said.

So they ambled along, the elder quite calm and thoroughly master of himself, the younger, all impulse, eagerness and enthusiasm. His generous admiration of Tom, amounting almost to a spirit of wors.h.i.+p, was plainly to be seen. It would have been hard to say how Tom felt or what he thought. At all events he had not been jostled out of his stolid calm.

"Did you ever hear any one say that there is more than one way to kill a cat?" he finally inquired, pausing to notice some bird or squirrel among the trees.

"I don't want to kill a cat," Hervey said. "I want to find some tracks, I----"

"You want to be an Eagle Scout," Tom concluded; "and you've got your mind set on it. That it?"

"That's it; but it's for the sake of my troop, too."

Still again, they strolled on in silence. A little twig cracked under Tom's foot, the crackle sounding clear in the solemn stillness. Some feathered creature chirped complainingly at the rude intrusion of its domain by these strangers. And, almost under their very feet, a tiny snake wriggled across the trail and was gone. The shadows were gathering now, and the fragrance of evening was beginning to permeate the dim woods. And all the respectable home-loving birds were seeking their nests.

And so these two strolled on, and for a few minutes neither spoke.

"Well then, suppose I give you a tip," Tom said. "Will you promise that you'll make good? You claim to be a scout. You say that when you get your mind set on a thing, nothing can stop you. That the idea?"

"That's it," Hervey answered.

"You wouldn't drop a trail after you once picked it up, would you? Some animals take you pretty far."

"You bet nothing would stop _me_ if I once got the tracks," Hervey said.

"I wouldn't care if they took me across the Desert of Sahara or over the Rocky Mountains."

"Hang on like a bulldog, hey?" Tom said.

"That's me," said Hervey.

"All right, it's a go," Tom concluded. "I'll see if I can give you a pointer or two down near camp in the morning. Ever follow a woodchuck--or a c.o.o.n? Only I don't want any badge-getter falling down on a trail, if I'm mixed up with it. That's one thing I can't stand--a quitter."

"I wouldn't anyway," Hervey said with great fervor; "but as long as I've got you and what you said to think about, you can bet your sweet life that not even a--a--a jungle would stop me--it wouldn't."

"That's the kind of a fellow they want for an Eagle Scout," Tom said; "do or die."

"That's me," said Hervey Willetts.

CHAPTER VI

THE EAGLE AND THE SCOUT

And so these two strolled on. And presently they came to a point where the wood was more spa.r.s.e, for they were approaching the rugged lower ledges of a mighty mountain, and the last rays of the dying sun fell upon the rocks and scantier vegetation of this clearer area, emphasizing the solemn darkness of the wooded ascent beyond.

Few, even of the scouts, had ever penetrated the enshrouding wilderness of that dizzy, forbidding height. There were strange tales, usually told to tenderfeet around the camp-fire, of mysterious hermits and ferocious bears and half-savage men who lurked high up in those all but inaccessible fastnesses, but no scout from Temple Camp had ever ascended beyond the lower reaches of that frowning old monarch.

At Temple Camp, when the cheery blaze was crackling in the witching hour of yarn telling, the seasoned habitues of the camp would direct the eye of the newcomer to a little glint of light high up upon the mountain, and edify him with dark tales of a lonesome draft dodger who had challenged that tangled profusion of tree and brush to escape going to war and had never been able to find his way down again--a quite just punishment for his cowardice. But time and again this freakish glint of light had been proven to be the reflection of that very camp-fire upon a huge rock lodged up there and held by interlacing roots.

Tom and Hervey stood upon a ledge of rock just outside the area of a great elm tree, and as they looked down and afar off, Black Lake seemed a mere puddle with toy cabins near it.

"I bet there are wild animals up there," Hervey said.

"Here's one of them now," commented Tom, pointing upward.

High above them in the dusk and with a background of golden-edged clouds, which gave the sun's last parting message to the earth, a great bird hovered motionless. It seemed to hang in air as if by a thread.

Then it descended with a wide, circling swoop. In less than ten seconds, as it seemed to Hervey, its body and great wings, and even its curved, cruel beak, were plainly visible circling a few yards above the tree. It seemed like a journey from the heavens to the earth, all in an instant.

"Watch him, watch him," Hervey whispered.

But Tom was not watching him at all. He knew what that savage descent meant and he was looking for its cause. Stealthily, with no more sound than that of a gliding canoe, he stole to the trunk of the tree and looked about with quick, short, scrutinizing glances, away up among its branches.

Then he placed his finger to his lips, warning Hervey to silence, and beckoned him into the darker shadow under the great tree.

"Did you see anything beside the bird?" he whispered.

"No," said Hervey. "Why? What is it?"

"Shh," Tom said; "look up--shh----"

It was the most fateful moment of all Hervey Willetts' scout career, and he did not know it.

CHAPTER VII

THE STREAK OF RED

"Look up there," Tom said; "out near the end of the third branch. See?

The little codger beat him to it."

Looking up, Hervey saw amid the thicker foliage, far removed from the stately trunk, something hanging from a leaf-covered branch. Even as he looked at it, it seemed to be swaying as if from a recent jolt. At first glimpse he thought it was a bat hanging there.