"Is that you, Fitz?" asked Major Henry.

"Yes. You fellows lie still a few seconds longer and I'll have some tea
for you."

Good old Fitz! He need not have done that. He had not been ordered to.
But it was a thoughtful Scout act--and was a Fitz act, to boot.

Scouts Ward and Van Sant were awake now; and we all lay watching Fitz,
and waiting, as he had asked us to. Then when we saw him put in the
tea--

"Levez!" spoke Major Henry; which is the old trapper custom. "Levez! Get
up!" (Note 63.)

Up we sprang, into the cold, and with our blankets about our shoulders,
Indian fashion, we each drank a good swig of hot tea. Then we washed our
faces, and packed our blankets, and took the trail.

It was about three in the morning. The moon was halfway down the west,
and the air was chill and had that peculiar feel of just before morning.
Everything was ghostly, as we slipped along, but a few birds were
twittering sleepily. Once a coyote crossed our path--stopped to look
back at us, and trotted away again.

Gradually the east began to pale; there were fewer stars along that
horizon than along the horizon where the moon was setting. The burro
tracks were plain before us, in the trail that led down the valley. The
trail inclined off to the left, or to the south of west; but we
concluded to follow it because we could make better time and we believed
that the railroad lay in that direction. The Red Fox Scouts ought to be
taken as near to the railroad as possible, before we left them. They had
been mighty good to us.

The moon sank, soon the sun would be up; the birds were moving as well
as chirping, the east was brightening, and already the tip of Pilot
Peak, far away behind us with Kit and Jed sleeping at his base, was
touched with pink, when we came upon a camp.

Red Fox Scout Van Sant, who was leading, suddenly stopped short and
lifted his hand in warning. Before, in a bend of the stream that we were
skirting, among the pines and spruces beside it was a lean-to, with a
blackened fire, and two figures rolled in blankets; and back from the
stream a little way, across in an open grassy spot, was a burro. It had
been grazing, but now it was eying us with head and ears up. Red Fox
Scout Van had sighted the burro first and next, of course, the lean-to
camp.

We stood stock-still, surveying.

"Cache!" whispered Major Henry (which means "Hide"); and we stepped
softly aside into the brush. For that burro looked very much like