with
most of our stuff!"

CHAPTER XXI

SCOUT GRIT

"Tell us how it happened, Billy!" said the patrol leader, when the
clamor of excited voices partly died away, giving him a chance to make
himself heard.

"Yes, what did they do to you, Billy?" demanded Josh, noticing that the
other did not seem to be limping, or showing any other signs of having
met with rough treatment at the hands of the camp raiders.

"Why, it was this way," Billy hastened to explain. "You see I was down
by the water cleaning all those fish at the time. Guess I must have
been pretty much a whole hour at the job. And I'd just about finished
when I thought I heard somebody give a sneeze, which made me get up off
my knees and look around."

"And did you see the tramps in camp cleaning things out then?" asked
Felix.

"Well, no, not exactly," replied Billy; "the most I thought I saw was
something moving in the bushes on the other side of the camp; and yes,
it was just like a laugh too that I caught."

"What did you do?" asked Josh.

"I wondered if those wild dogs had come back," said the guardian of the
camp, "and the first thing I thought to do was to put the pan of fish
I'd cleaned up in the crotch of a tree. Then I went to the camp, and
oh! my stars I but it was in an _awful_ mess, with things flung around,
and most of our eatables taken, as well as the frying-pan and
coffee-pot!"

"Oh! that's sure the limit!" groaned Josh. "We'll never be able to keep
on our hike with nothing to eat or drink, and not a pan to cook stuff
in, even if we bought it from the farmers. It spells the end, fellows!"

"Yes," echoed George, always seeing the worst side of things, "we'll
have to go back to town like dogs with their tails between their legs,
and have all the other fellows make fun of us."

"Hold on there, fellows, don't show the white feather so easily," said
Tom, who was looking very determined.

"Do you mean there's any chance for us to keep going, after our things
have been taken in this way?" demanded George.

"Well, we can talk that over to-night, and then see what Mr.
Witherspoon has to say about it when he joins us in the morning," Tom
told him. "As for me, I'd be willing to go on half rations rather than
own up beat. How do we know but that this raid on our stuff was made
just to force us to give up our hike?"

"Why, how could that be?" asked Billy Button, wonderingly.

"And why would hoboes want that to happen?" added George