The Boy Scouts of the Eagle Patrol | Page 2

fat one, "I notice at that, though, that I am a regular scout while you are only a rookie."
"Come on, cut out the conversation," exclaimed Corporal Crawford hastily, "while we are fussing about here, Rob Blake must be halfway home."
With a groan of comical despair from poor Tubby, the Boy Scouts darted forward once more. On and on they pushed across country, skillfully tracking their leader by the various signs they had been taught to know and of which the present scouting expedition was a test.
Their young leader evidently intended them to use their eyes to the utmost for, beside the stone signs, he used blaze-marks, cut on the trees with his hunting knife. For instance, at one place they would find a square bit of bark removed, with a long slice to the left of it. This indicated that their quarry had doubled to the left. The slice to the right of the square blaze indicated the reverse.
Suddenly Corporal Crawford held up his hand as a signal for silence. The scouts came to an abrupt stop.
From what seemed to be only a short distance in front of them they could hear a voice upraised apparently in anger. Replying to it were the tones of their leader.
"Seems to be trouble ahead of some kind," exclaimed Crawford. "Come on, boys."
They all advanced close on his heels--guided by the sound of the angry voice, which did not diminish in tone but apparently waxed more and more furious as they drew nearer. Presently the woodland thinned and the ground became dotted with stumps of felled timber and in a few paces more they emerged on a small peach orchard at the edge of which stood Rob Blake and a larger and older boy. As Crawford and his followers came upon the scene the elder lad, who seemed beside himself with rage, picked up a large rock and was about to hurl it with all his might at Rob when the young corporal dashed forward and held his hand up to stay him.
"Here, what's all this trouble?" he demanded.
"You just keep out of it, Merritt Crawford," said the elder lad, a hulking, thick-set youth with a mean look on his heavy features. "I'm just reading this kid here a lesson. This orchard is my father's and mine and you'll keep out of it in future or suffer the consequences, understand?"
"Why, we aren't doing any harm," protested Rob Blake heatedly.
"I don't care what you are doing or not doing," retorted the other, "this is my father's orchard and you'll keep off it. You and the rest of you tin soldiers. I don't want you stealing our peaches."
"I guess you are sore, Jack Curtiss, because you couldn't get a boy scout patrol of your own! I guess that's what the trouble is," remarked Tubby Hopkins softly, but with a meaning look at the big lad.
"You impudent little whipper-snapper," roared Jack Curtiss, "if you weren't such a shrimp I'd lick you for that remark, but you're all beneath my notice. All I want to say to you is keep away from my orchard or I'll give you a trimming."
"Suppose you start now," said Rob Blake quietly, "if you are so anxious to show what a scrapper you are."
"Bah, I don't want anything to do with you, I tell you," rejoined Curtiss, turning away, with a rather troubled expression, however, for while he was a bully the big lad had no particular liking for a fight unless he was pretty sure that all the advantage lay on his side.
"It was too bad you didn't get that patrol of yours, Jack," called the irrepressible Tubby after him as the big youth strode off across the orchard toward the old-fashioned farmhouse in which he lived with his father, a well-to-do farmer. "Never mind; better luck next time," he went on, "or maybe we'll let you into ours some time."
"You just wait," roared the retreating bully, shaking his fist at the lads, "I'll make trouble for you yet."
"Well," remarked Rob Blake, as Jack Curtiss strode off, "I guess the run is over for to-day. Too bad we should have come out on his land. Of course he feels sore at us; and I shouldn't wonder but he will really try to do us some mischief if he gets a chance."
As it was growing late and there did not seem much chance of restarting the "Follow the Trail" practice, that day at least, the boys strolled back through the woodland and soon emerged on a country road about three miles from Hampton Inlet, where they lived.
While they are covering the distance perhaps the reader may care to know something about the cause of the enmity which Jack Curtiss entertained toward the lads of the Eagle Patrol. It had its beginning several months