The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound

“But you mustn’t forget,” interposed Bobolink, “that their boots were made of skins, and not of the tough leather we use these days. I’d like to see Hank Lawson gnawing on one of his old hide shoes, that’s what! It couldn’t be done, any way you fix it.”

The hole grew by degrees, but very slowly. It seemed as though tons and tons of snow must have been swept over the crest of the hill, to settle down in every cavity it could find.

“We’re getting there, all right!” declared Bobolink, after he had taken his turn, and in turn handed over the shovel to Paul.

“Oh! the Fourth of July is coming too, never fear!” jeered Jud, who was in a grumbling mood.

“Why, Tolly Tip here says we’ve made good progress already,” Tom Betts declared, merely to combat the spirit manifested by Jud, “and that we’ll soon be half-way through the pile. If it were three times as big we’d get there in the end, because this is a never-say-die bunch of scouts, you bet!”

“Oh! I was only fooling,” chuckled Jud, feeling ashamed of his grumbling. “Of course, we’ll manage it, by hook or by crook. Show me the time the Banner Boy Scouts ever failed, will you, when they’d set their minds on doing anything worth while? We’re bound to get there.”

The work went on. By turns the members of the relief party applied themselves to the task of cutting a way through the snow heap, and when each had come up for the third time it became apparent that they were near the end of their labor, for signs of the rock began to appear.

Inspired by this fact they took on additional energy, and the way the snow flew under the vigorous attack of Jud was pretty good evidence that he still believed in their ultimate success.

“Now watch my smoke!” remarked Tom Betts, as he took the shovel in his turn and proceeded to show them what he could do. “I’ve made up my mind to keep everlastingly at it till I strike solid rock. And I’ll do it, or burst the boiler.”

He had hardly spoken when they heard the plunging metal shovel strike something that gave out a positive “chink,” and somehow that sound seemed to spell success.

“Guess you’ve gone and done it, Tom!” declared Jud, with something like a touch of chagrin in his voice, for Jud had been hoping he would be the lucky one to show the first results.

There was no slackening of their ardor, and the boys continued to shovel the snow out of the hole at a prodigious rate until every one could easily see the crevice in the rocks.

“Listen!” exclaimed Jud just then.

“Oh! what do you think you heard?” asked Bobolink.

“I don’t know whether it was the shovel scraping over the rock or a human groan,” Jud continued, looking unusually serious.

They all listened, but could hear nothing except the cold wind sighing through some of the trees not far away.

“Let me finish the work for you, Tom,” suggested Paul, seeing that Tom Betts was pretty well exhausted from his labors.

“I guess I will, Paul, because I’m nearly tuckered out,” admitted the persistent worker, as he handed the implement over, and pushed back, though still remaining in the hole.

Paul was not very long in clearing away the last of the snow that clogged the entrance to the old bears’ den. They could then mark the line of the gaping hole that cleft the rock, and which served as an antechamber to the cavity that lay beyond.

“That does it, Paul,” said Jack, softly; though just why he spoke half under his breath he could not have explained if he had been asked, except that, somehow, it seemed as though they were very close to some sort of tragedy.

The shovel was put aside. It had done its part of the work, and could rest. And everybody prepared to follow Paul as he pushed after the guide into the crevice leading to the cave.

The smell of wood smoke was now very strong, and all of them could catch it.

So long as the entrapped boys had a fire there was no fear that they would perish from the cold. Moreover, down under the rocks and the snow the atmosphere could hardly be anything as severe as in the open. Indeed Paul had been in many caves where the temperature remained about the same day in and day out, through the whole year.

Coming from the bewildering and dazzling snow fields it was little wonder that none of them could see plainly at the moment they started into the bears’ den. By degrees, as their eyes became accustomed to the semi-darkness that held sway below, they would be able to distinguish objects, and make discoveries.

Stronger grew the pungent odor of smoke. It was not unpleasant at all, and to some of the scouts most welcome, bearing as it did a message of hope, and the assurance that things had not yet come to the last stretch.

Half turning as he groped his way onward, the guide pointed to something ahead—at least Paul who came next in line fancied that Tolly Tip was trying to draw his attention to that quarter.

In turn he performed the same office for the next boy, and thus the intelligence was passed along the line, from hand to hand.

They could, by straining their eyes, discover some half huddled figures just beyond. A faint light showed where the dying fire lay; and even as they looked one of the partly seen figures was seen to stir, and after this they noticed that a little flame had started up.

Paul believed that the very last stick of wood was on the fire and nearing the end.

Bobolink could not help giving a low cry of commiseration. The sound must have been heard by those who were huddled around the miserable fire, for they scrambled to their knees. As the tiny blaze sprang up just then, it showed the scouts the four Stanhope boys looking pinched and wan, with their eyes staring the wonder they must have felt at sight of the newcomers.

Hank was seen to jab his knuckles into his eyes as though unable fully to believe what he beheld. Then he held out both hands beseechingly toward the newcomers. They would never be able to forget the genuine pain contained in his voice as he half groaned:

“Oh! have you come to save us? Give us somethin’ to eat, won’t you? We’re starvin’, starvin’, I tell you!”

CHAPTER XXVII

“FIRST AID”

Possibly the case was not quite as bad as Hank declared, but for all that those four lads were certainly in a bad way.

Paul took charge of affairs at once, as became the acting scout-master of the troop.

“It’s a good thing we thought to pick up some wood as we came along,” he remarked. “Fetch it in, boys, and get this fire going the first thing. Then we’ll make a pot of coffee to begin with.”

“Coffee!” echoed the four late prisoners of the cave. “Oh, my stars! why! we went and forgot to bring any along with us. Coffee! that sounds good to us!”

“That’s only a beginning,” said Bobolink, as he came back with his arms filled with sticks, which he began to lay upon the almost dead fire. “We’ve got ham and biscuits, Boston baked beans, potatoes, corn, grits, and lots of other things. Just give us a little time to do some cooking, and you’ll get all you can cram down.”

Paul knew the hungry boys would suffer all sorts of tortures while waiting for the meal to be cooked. On this account he saw that they were given some crackers and cheese, to take the keen edge of their voracious appetites off.

It was a strange spectacle in that hole amidst the rocks, with the fire leaping up, Bobolink bending over it doing the cooking with his customary vim, the rest of the scouts gathered around, and those four wretched fellows munching away for dear life, as they sniffed the coffee beginning to scent the air with its fragrance.

As soon as this was ready Paul poured out some, added condensed milk, and handed the tin cup to Hank.

He was really surprised to see the rough fellow turn immediately and give it to Sid Jeffreys and hear him say:

“I reckon you need it the wust, Sid; git the stuff inside in a hurry.”

Then Paul remembered that Sid had recently been injured. And somehow he began to understand that even such a hardened case as Hank Lawson, in whom no one seemed ready to place any trust, might have a small, tender spot in his heart. He could not be all bad, Paul decided.

Hank, however, did not refuse to accept the second cup, and hastily drain it. Apparently, he believed the leader should have first choice, and meant to impress this fact upon his satellites.

What to do about the four boys had puzzled Paul a little. To allow them to accompany him and his chums back to Deer Head Lodge would make the remainder of their outing a very disagreeable affair. Besides, there was really no room for any more guests under that hospitable roof; and certainly Tolly Tip would not feel in the humor to invite them.

So Paul had to figure it out in some other way. While Hank and his three cronies were eating savagely, Bobolink having finished preparing the odd meal for them, Paul took occasion to sound the one who occupied the position of chief.

“We’ve brought over enough grub to last you four a week,” he started in to say, when Hank interrupted him.

“We sure think you’re white this time, Paul Morrison, an’ I ain’t a-goin’ to hold back in sayin’ so either, just ’cause we’ve been scrappin’ with your crowd right along. Guess you know that we come up here partly to bother you fellers. I’m right glad we ain’t had a chance to play any tricks on you up to now. An’ b’lieve me! it’s goin’ to be a long time ’fore we’ll forgit this thing.”

Paul was, of course, well pleased to hear this. He feared, however, that in a month from that time Hank was apt to forget the obligations he owed the scouts, and likely enough would commence to annoy them again.

“The question that bothers me just now,” Paul continued, “is what you ought to do. I don’t suppose any of you care to stay up here much longer, now that this blizzard has spoiled all of the fun of camping out?”

“I’ve had about all I want of the game,” admitted Jud Mabley, promptly.

“Count me in too,” added Sim Jeffreys. “I feel pretty sick of the whole business, and we can’t get back home any too soon to suit me.”

“Same here,” muttered Bud Phillips, who had kept looking at Paul for some time in a furtive way, as though he had something on his mind that he was strongly tempted to communicate to the scout leader.

“So you see that settles it,” grinned Hank. “Even if I wanted to hang out here all the rest o’ the holidays, three agin one is most too much. We’d be havin’ all sorts o’ rows every day. Yep, we’ll start fur home the fust chance we git.”

That pleased Paul, and was what he had hoped to hear.

“Of course,” he went on to say to Hank, “it’s a whole lot shorter cutting across country to Stanhope than going around by way of Lake Tokala and the old canal that leads from the Radway into the Bushkill river; but you want to be mighty careful of your compass points, or you might get lost.”

“Sure thing, Paul,” remarked the other, confidently; “but that’s my long suit, you ought to know. Never yet did git lost, an’ I reckon I ain’t a-goin’ to do it now. I’ll lay it all out and make the riffle, don’t you worry about that same.”

“We came over that way, you know,” interrupted Jud Mabley, “and left blazes on the trees in places where we thought we might take the wrong trail goin’ back.”

“That was a wise thing to do,” said Paul, “and shows that some of you ought to be in the scout movement, for you’ve got it in you to make good.”

“Tried it once you ’member, Paul, but your crowd didn’t want anything to do wi’ me, so I cut it out,” grumbled Jud, though he could not help looking pleased at being complimented on the woodcraft of their crowd by such an authority as the scout-master.

Paul turned from Jud and looked straight into the face of the leader.

“Hank,” he said earnestly, “you know just as well as I do that Jud was blackballed not because we didn’t believe he had it in him to make an excellent scout, but for another reason. Excuse me if I’m blunt about it, but I mean it just as much for your good as I did bringing this food all the way over here to help you out. Every one of you has it in him to make a good scout, if only he would change certain ways he now has.”

Hank looked down at his feet, and remained silent for a brief time, during which he doubtless was having something of an inward fight.

“All right, Paul,” he suddenly remarked, looking up again grimly. “I ain’t a-goin’ to git mad ’cause you speak so plain. If you fellers’d go to all the trouble to fight your way over here, and fetch us this food, I reckon as how I’ve been readin’ you the wrong way.”

“You have, Hank! You certainly have!” affirmed Bobolink, who was greatly interested in this effort on the part of Paul to bring about a change in the boys who had taken such malicious delight in annoying the scouts whenever the opportunity arose.

“Believe this, Hank,” said Paul earnestly; “if you only chose to change your ways, none of you would be blackballed the next time you tried to join the organization. There’s no earthly reason why all of you shouldn’t be accepted as candidates if only you can subscribe to the iron-bound rules we work under, and which every one of us has to obey. Think it over, won’t you, boys? It might pay you.”

“Reckon we will, Paul,” muttered Hank, though he shook his head at the same time a little doubtfully, as though deep down in his heart he feared they could never overcome the feeling of prejudice that had grown up against them in Stanhope.

“I wouldn’t be in too big a hurry to start back home,” continued Paul, thinking he had already said enough to fulfill his duty as a scout. “In another day or so it’s likely to warm up a bit, and you’ll find it more comfortable on the way.”

“Just what I was thinkin’ myself, Paul,” agreed Hank. “We’ve got stacks of grub now, thanks to you and your crowd, and we c’n git enough wood in places, now you’ve opened our dooryard fur us. Yep, we’ll hang out till it feels some warmer, and then cut sticks fur home.”

“Here’s a rough map I made out that may be useful to you, Hank,” continued the scout-master, “if you happen to lose your blazed trail. Tolly Tip helped me get it up, and as he’s been across to Stanhope many times he ought to know every foot of the way.”

“It might come in handy, an’ I’ll take the same with thanks, Paul,” Hank observed, with all his customary aggressive ways lacking. There is nothing so well calculated to take the spirit out of a boy as acute hunger.

When they had talked for some little time longer, Paul decided that it was time for him and his chums to start back to the cabin. Those afternoons in late December were very short, and night would be down upon them almost before they knew it.

It was just then that Bud Phillips seemed to have made up his mind to say something that had been on the tip of his tongue ever since he realized under what great obligations the scouts had placed him and his partners.

“Seems like I oughtn’t to let you get away from here, Paul, without tellin’ somethin’ that I reckon might be interestin’ to you all,” he went on to say.

“All right, Bud, we’ll be glad to hear it,” the scout-master observed, with a smile, “though for the life of me I can’t guess what it’s all about.”

“Go ahead Bud, and dish it out!” urged Bobolink, impatiently.

CHAPTER XXVIII

MORE STARTLING NEWS

Bud Phillips looked somewhat confused. Apparently, he did not figure any too well in what he felt it his duty to confess to Paul and his chums.

“I’m ashamed that I kept mum about it when the old man accused some of you fellers of startin’ the fire, an’ gettin’ at his tight wad,” he went on to say; and it can be easily understood that this beginning gave Paul a start.

“Oh! it’s about that ugly business, is it?” the scout-master remarked, frowning a little, for, naturally, he instantly conceived the idea that Hank and his three reckless cronies must have had a hand in that outrage.

That Hank guessed what was flitting through the other’s mind was plainly indicated by the haste with which he cried out:

“Don’t git it in your head we had anything to do with that fire, Paul, nor yet with tappin’ the old man’s safe. I know we ain’t got any too good reputations ’round Stanhope, but it’s to be hoped we ain’t dropped so low as that. Skip along, Bud, an’ tell what you saw.”

“Why, it’s this way,” continued the narrator, eagerly. “I chanced to be Johnny-on-the-spot that night, being ’mong the first to arrive when old Briggs started to scream that his store was afire. Never mind how it came that way. And Paul, I saw two figures a-runnin’ away right when I came up, runnin’ like they might be afraid o’ bein’ seen an’ grabbed.”

“Were they close enough for you to notice who they were?” asked Paul, taking a deep interest in the narration, since he and his chums had been accused of doing the deed in the presence of many of Stanhope’s good people.

“Oh! I saw ’em lookin’ back as they hurried away,” admitted Bud. “And, Paul, they were those same two tramps we had the trouble with that day. You remember we ran the pair out o’ town, bombardin’ ’em with rocks.”

Paul could plainly see the happening in his memory, with the two hoboes turning when at a safe distance to shake their fists at the boys. Evidently their rough reception all around had caused them to have a bitter feeling toward the citizens of Stanhope, and they had come back later on to have their revenge.

“Now that I think of it,” Paul went on to say, “they had just come out of the store when you ran afoul of the pair. The chances are that Mr. Briggs treated them as sourly as he does all their class, and they were furiously mad at him.”

“Yes,” added Bobolink, “and while in there they must have noticed where he had his safe. Maybe they saw him putting money in it.”

“I’m glad you told me this, Bud,” the scout-master confessed, “because it goes part way to clear up the mystery of that fire and robbery.”

“Bud was meanin’ to tell all about it when we got back,” said Hank. “He kept still because he heard Briggs accuse you scouts of the fire racket, and Bud just then thought it too good a joke to spoil. But we’ve been talkin’ it over, and come to the conclusion we owed it to the community to set ’em right.”

This sounded rather lofty, but Paul guessed that there must be another reason back of the determination to tell. These fellows had decided that possibly suspicion might be directed toward them, and, as they had had enough trouble already without taking more on their shoulders, it would be the part of wisdom to start the ball rolling in the right quarter.

“Well, we must be going,” said Paul.

“Do you reckon on stayin’ out your time up here?” queried Hank.

“We haven’t decided that yet,” replied the scout-master; “but the chances are we shall conclude to cut the trip short and get back home. This heavy snow has spoiled a good many plans we’d laid out; and we might be having a better time of it with the rest of the fellows at home. We’re going to talk it over and by to-morrow settle on our plans.”

“Here’s where we get busy and start on the return hike,” announced Tom Betts, just as cheerily as though he were not already feeling the effects of that stiff plunge through the deep snowdrifts, and secretly faced the return trip with more or less apprehension.

Hank and his followers came out of their den to wave a hearty farewell after their late rescuers. Just then all animosities had died in their hearts, and they could look upon the scouts without the least bitterness.

“Sounds all mighty fine, I must say,” remarked Bobolink, as they pushed along, after losing sight of the quartette standing at the foot of the snowy hill, “but somehow I don’t seem to feel it’s going to last. That Hank’s got it in him to be a tough character, and it’d be next door to a miracle if he ever changed his ways.”

“Do you think he will, Paul?” demanded Jud, flatly.

“Ask me something easy,” laughed the scout-master. “It all depends on Hank himself. If he once took a notion to make a man of himself, I believe he could do it no matter what happened. He’s got the grit, but without the real desire that isn’t going to count for much. Time alone will tell.”

“Well, we’ve seen something like that happen right in our town, you know,” Bobolink went on to say, reflectively, as he trudged along close to the heels of the one in front of him, for they were going “Indian-file,” following the sinuous trail made during their preceding trip.

“I was talking with the other Jud,” remarked Jud Elderkin just then, “and he gave me a pointer that might be worth something. I don’t know just why he chose to confide it to me, instead of speaking out, but he did.”

“Was it, too, about the fire and the robbery?” asked Tom Betts.

“It amounted to the same thing, I should say,” replied Jud, “because it was connected with the hoboes.”

“Go on and tell us then,” urged Bobolink.

“He says they’re up in this part of the country,” asserted the other.

“Wow! that begins to look as if we might be running across the ugly pair after all!” exclaimed Tom Betts, his face lighting up with eagerness. “Now wouldn’t it be queer if we managed to capture the yeggs and turn ’em over to the authorities? Paul, how about that now?”

“Oh! you’re getting too far ahead of the game, Tom,” he was told. “We must know a good deal more about this business before we could decide to take such desperate chances.”

“But if the opportunity came along, wouldn’t it be our duty to cage the rascals?” the persistent Tom demanded.

“Perhaps it might,” Paul told him. “But Jud, did he explain to you how he came to know the tramps were up here in the woods above Lake Tokala?”

“Just what he did,” replied the other, promptly. “It seems that Jud, while he was out hunting, had a glimpse of one of the ugly pair the day before this storm hit us. It gave him a chance to trail the man in order to see what he was worth in that line. And, Paul, he did his work so well that he followed the fellow all the way to where the two of them had put up.”

“And that was where, Jud?” demanded the leader of the troop.

“There’s an old dilapidated cabin half-way between here and the lake,” explained Jud. “Maybe Tolly Tip knows about it.”

“Sure that I do!” responded the woodsman. “’Twas used years ago by some charcoal burners, but has been goin’ to decay this long time. Mebbe now they’ve patched up the broken roof, and mane to stay there awhile. It’s in a snug spot, and mighty well protected from the wind in winters.”

“That’s the place,” Jud assured them. “The hoboes are hanging out there, and seem to have plenty to eat, so Jud Mabley told me. If we concluded to take a look in at ’em on our way home it could be done easy enough, I’d think.”

“We’ll talk it over,” decided Paul. “We must remember that in all likelihood they’re a desperate pair, and well armed. As a rule scouts have no business to constitute themselves criminal catchers, though in this case it’s a bit different.”

“Because we’ve been publicly accused by Mr. Briggs of being the persons who set his old store on fire, just in spite!” declared Bobolink, briskly enough. “And say! wouldn’t it be a bully trick if we could take those two tramps back with us, having the goods on them? Then we’d say to Mr. Briggs: ‘There you are, sir! These are the men you want! And we’d trouble you to make your apology just as public as your hasty accusation was.’”

“Hurrah!” cried Tom Betts. “That’s the ticket.”

But Paul was not to be hurried into giving a decision. He wanted more time to consider matters, and settle his plan of campaign. The other scouts, however, found little reason to doubt that in the end he would conclude to look favorably on the bold proposition Jud had advanced.

Just as they had anticipated, the return journey was not anywhere nearly so strenuous an undertaking as the outward tramp had been. Even where they had to cross great drifts a passage had been broken for them, and the wind, not being high, had failed to fill up the gaps thus far.

The rescue party arrived in the vicinity of the cabin long before sundown, and could catch whiffs of the wood smoke that blew their way, which gave promise of the delightful warmth they would find once inside the forest retreat.

CHAPTER XXIX

THE WILD DOG PACK

“Well! well! what under the sun’s been going on here while we’ve been away?”

Bobolink burst out with this exclamation the very minute he passed hastily in at the cabin door. A jolly fire blazed on the hearth, and the interior of the cabin was well lighted by the flames.