"If it is too far for me to walk back," Ned laughed, "you may give me a bunk on the floor! Anyway, I"m going to see you home!"
As the boy spoke he beckoned to Frank to step to one side with him.
"Of course this looks all straight, on the face of it," he said, when the two were alone together, "but one can never tell. We"ve got to be pretty careful, for we are in a strange country, and are here for a purpose which may be resented by the mountaineers. We can"t afford to take any chances."
"Do you suspect the old lady?" asked Frank, in amazement.
"I don"t know what to think," was the hesitating reply. "The first night we spend in a permanent camp, up she comes with a story about a son being about to bring in a boy of seven for her to mother! Then, as if that wasn"t enough of a bait for us to snap at, she goes on to say that the son is blonde, with light brown hair and blue eyes.
Looks like we were being led on!"
"You bet it does," Frank replied. "Jimmie and Teddy have disappeared, and this may be a frame-up, and so I wouldn"t go off alone with her.
And, look here," Frank went on, "do you believe Uncle Ike would have kicked, and screamed, and made a row generally, if only this old lady had approached him? Do you, now?"
"She might have frightened him," Ned replied, "for he may not be used to women. Still, she may have had some one with her! I was thinking that Uncle Ike sounded a warning on slight cause," he added.
"Well, if I were you, I wouldn"t go away alone with her," advised Frank. "Let me go with you if you insist on going."
"Of course I"ve got to go now," Ned went on. "I"ve promised her, and she is expecting me to go. But I"ll tell you what you may do. You can wait until I have gone some distance and then follow on behind, not so as to be seen by any other person trailing us, but still close enough to be available in case of trouble."
"All right," Frank agreed. "I"ll keep back far enough to see any one who might be following the two of you! I wish Jimmie was here! He"d be just the one to go with me. And there"s always something doing when Jimmie is around!"
"I"m worried about those boys!" Ned answered. "I"m going to keep a sharp lookout for them, all the way to the cabin."
"There"s something wrong," Frank hastened to say. "They never would have remained away from camp like this. And without supper, too!
Jimmie is particular to be on hand when it comes to eating time.
There! There"s Uncle Ike talking in his sleep! I wonder what"s eating him now? Shall I go and see?"
"No," Ned said, hastily, seizing Frank by the arm. "Don"t even look in that direction. Watch Mrs. Mary Brady!"
The old woman"s face was turned toward the spot where the mules were staked out, her figure was straight, tense, alert. She appeared to be listening and watching for some agreed-upon signal from the corral.
Ned moved over toward her cautiously.
Once the old woman moved, involuntarily, toward the mules, but she drew back in a moment and stood, waiting, with her eyes on the boys, now in a little group not far from the spot where she stood.
CHAPTER VI
SIGNALS IN THE CANYON
Jimmie and Teddy pa.s.sed over the summit to the west of the camp and took their way down a difficult incline toward the headwaters of the Greenbrier river. They traveled some distance, walking, sliding, creeping, before they came in sight of a copse which appeared to be worth looking over for wild game.
"I don"t know about this wild turkey business," Teddy said, as the boys stood on an elevation lifting above the patch of timber. "If I"ve got it right, wild turkeys are precious birds in West Virginia."
"I never once thought of that!" Jimmie exclaimed. "Why, we won"t have any fun hunting at all! I wonder if there is a closed season for c.o.o.ns?"
Teddy took out a memorandum book and turned to an insert pasted on the inside of the cover. Dropping to the ground, so as not to attract the attention of any natives who might be near by, he read the slip by the aid of his electric searchlight.
"Open season for wild turkeys in West Virginia from October fifteen to December one," he read. "Now, what do you know about that? Rotten, eh?"
"I guess we can get one to eat, all right," grumbled Jimmie. "Who"s going to know anything about it if we do, I"d like to know? Away off here in the mountains!"
"I presume there are constables and justices up here who would be glad to soak us for fifty or a hundred apiece!" Teddy grinned. "I reckon we"d better eat hens, and c.o.o.n, and fresh fish--if we can get them! And deer! We get no venison steaks!"
"Not this season!" Jimmie grunted. "They"d take great joy, as you say, in getting us into jail and extracting all our vacation money!
I"m going to take photographs of the West Virginia game laws. A man is about the only creature one can shoot down here during the summer and get away with it! I"ll have Frank put that idea in his dad"s newspaper!"
"We"ve got enough to eat, anyway," laughed Teddy. "The question before the house right now is how are we going to get down into that patch of trees?"
"The laws of gravity will take us down!" answered Jimmie. "Just step off this ledge and see if I"m not right. What do we want to go down there for, anyway, if we can"t shoot a wild turkey after we get there? I"m going back to camp."
The night was falling fast, and stars were showing between ma.s.ses of clouds. The boys had traveled farther from the camp than they had intended, and the return journey was all up hill. They surveyed the prospect gloomily.
"I could eat the top off one of the mountains!" Jimmie declared, as they turned to make the climb. "I never was so hungry in my life.
Wish we were back in camp!"
Teddy, who had turned to look down into the valley, now caught Jimmie by the arm and pointed downward, where a low-lying ridge jutted out of the general slope and made a small canyon between itself and the body of the mountains, a canyon in which a trinkle of water showed.
"Do you see that column of smoke?" he asked, as Jimmie turned.
"There must be a camp there," Jimmie exclaimed. "I thought we would be all alone up here for a time--until we got a line on the men who stole the prince."
"Wait a minute!" Teddy answered. "There! Now do you see two columns of smoke?"
The two columns lifted skyward for only a second, then died down.
"That"s the Boy Scout signal for help!" Jimmie commented. "I wonder what shut it off so quickly? It would be strange if we found Boy Scouts here in the mountains--eh?"
"According to all reports," Teddy answered, "you boys found Scouts in all parts of the world, even in China and the Philippines! If it is a Scout making that Indian sign for help, he"ll get the smoke going again before long. There they are!"
The two columns of smoke were in the air again, ascending from the canyon between the mountainside and the outcropping ridge. Directly a gleam of fire was seen.
"That"s the call for help, all right!" Jimmie cried. "What shall we do about it?"
"We ought to go right there. The boy may have been injured in a fall, and may be starving! We ought to get there as soon as possible."
"Without going back to camp to tell the boys?" asked Jimmie. "We have been gone a long time now, remember. They will be worrying about us pretty soon."
"But we ought to go right now!" insisted Teddy. "The boy may be in trouble."
"Something else coming!" cried Jimmie, then. "See that blazing stick working overtime? He"s going to talk in the Myer code! Now count right and left."
"There"s one to the right!" Teddy said. "I"ve lost track of the code already."
"No. 1 motion is to the right," Jimmie quoted from the wig-wag lesson he had learned on first becoming a Boy Scout. "It should embrace an arc of ninety degrees, starting at the vertical and returning to it without pause, and should be made in a plane exactly at right angles to the line connecting the two stations.
"And No. 2 motion is the same, only on the left side. And three is the same, only the signal goes to the ground and comes back to the vertical! Now I"ve got it! Then he wig-wags again I"ll tell you what he says. You read, too, and see if we agree."