Читать книгу Skinny McCord - Percy Keese Fitzhugh - Страница 6

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Of course no one suspected him of trying to steal. He had just had a glimpse of a little nocturnal game that was popular in camp. Whoever could remove this pennant was welcome to it and might plant it in front of his patrol cabin. These midnight raids were very common and not infrequently successful. Our stealthy visitor had chanced to pause before the pennant cabin.

He now came to the main body of the camp and saw the whole expanse of the dark lake with the great bulk of wooded hills beyond. He glanced about at the cluster of rustic buildings, the main pavilion, the storehouse and cooking shack, the “eats” pavilion, Administration Shack. Cautiously (for now he was fearful of the slightest sound) he approached the lake and stood on the float looking off across the black water. Close by him the rocking boats knocked one against another; there was the metallic sound of clanking oar-locks now and then. How strange seemed all these evidences of life when deserted and wrapped in darkness!

The diving board pointed out into the lake like a big, ghostly finger. Slanting upward as it did, it seemed to be pointing at the precipitous hills across the lake which cast their inverted shadow in the water, making the dark surface still darker. At night there seemed always to be two shades of blackness on that enclosed lake, caused by the vast shadow of the rugged heights beyond. Scouts had tried to row out to where this deeper gloom in the water began, but they could never find it.

The prowling stranger examined one of the boats to see if it was locked. He lifted the chain as gingerly as one would handle a snake. No, the boats were not locked. He might take one, if he could find the oars, and row across and baffle pursuit among those wilderness-clad hills. He could push the boat back into the lake again and they would just think it had drifted away from its mooring. He was altogether too clever, this strange boy.

But just now he had business in the camp; then he would consider how best to proceed on his fugitive way. This was a ticklish matter that he had now to transact. Then all would be well. So far he believed he had done well—if you call it doing well to do what he had done. At least good luck had smiled upon him.

He must now find the camp-fire spot. From this point (according to the only hint he had) he would see a hill and up that hill to the left, would be the Martha Norris Memorial Cabins. But how to find and awaken a particular sleeper in that group was a puzzle. If these boy scouts (he called them boy scouts notwithstanding that he was himself a boy) were all like the one who had appeared in the cabin doorway, he would have to practice superhuman stealth. He could do that. He had, in perverted form, every physical quality dear to scouting.

If he had not been absorbed by very pressing business, he might have spared a moment to flatter himself that not many boys could prowl around a sleeping scout camp undiscovered. He was beating them at their own game. But his only thought about this remote scout community was that it was to serve his purpose. Two days previously he had never thought about it. Then he had had an inspiration. And two days hence he would forget that there was such a place as Temple Camp.

He found the camp-fire spot, a circle of low masonry, about eight inches high and ten feet in diameter. It was well removed from the nearest building. As he looked at it, it reminded him of a tiny circus ring. It was all strewn with gray ashes and charred bits of log. He was in the very heart of Temple Camp. For as the camp had grown larger and extended up the wooded hillside away from the lake, this nightly gathering place had come to be more than just a camp-fire. Scouts who seldom met at other times, met here. It was the market-place of camp.

The roaring blaze which nightly painted its counterpart in the dark lake, embodied the very essence of scouting. And the romance of this enchanted spot lingered in the daytime when only ashes remained within the stone circle, and only upturned boxes and ramshackle benches and pieces of canvas lay about outside, giving silent testimony of the throngs that gathered there when the day was done. The roaring fire is a feature of every camp. At Temple Camp it was an institution.

But our stealthy visitor had no sentiment about this merry ceremonial of scouting. He approached the hallowed spot with caution and glanced about. There seemed to be a hill, or spreading knoll, rising from the neighborhood, but he could see no cabins on this rising ground. There was a trail, however, which seemed to come from around the cooking shack and peter out on this slight eminence. He hardly knew what to do. He had not fancied the camp to be anything like this, a community made up of cabin groups and rustic avenues and tiny isolated abodes far removed from the body of the original camp. It was like a little city with tiny suburbs. Even with the information he had, he was hunting for a needle in a haystack.

His foot caught in a loop of rope attached to a square of old tent canvas on which several scouts had sprawled. He stumbled, fell over a bench, scrambled to his feet, and was instantly aware of a dark figure on the opposite side of the circle. It seemed to have risen simultaneously with him, almost like his shadow. He was startled, every nerve on edge. Was this another of those uncanny beings appearing to challenge him? The dark figure said not a word, only stared at him.