The Wolf Patrol Part 32

The scouts did not look very happy over this, for they both hated any fuss. But when they got into the big kitchen they found it was all right. The miller's wife was not a fussy person at all, and they were at home with the old lady in a minute. The little girl was sitting beside the fire in a big chair. She looked very pale, but was quite herself again.

''Tis a new thing to her, you see,' explained the miller's wife.

'She's my son's child, and lives over to Baildon, forty mile away. I don't know as ever she'd seen the race a-runnin' afore--leastways, from the bridge.'

'It made my head swing,' put in the child.

'Ay, it turned her head all swimmy like,' said the miller. 'Well, it's a merciful providence there wor' brave hearts at hand to save ye.

Now,' he went on to the scouts, 'I can see by yer knapsacks an' sticks as ye be on a sort o' journey through the land.'

'Yes, we're on a scouting tramp,' said d.i.c.k.

'Ah!' said the miller, and rubbed his ear.

d.i.c.k saw he did not quite understand, and he entered on a short explanation of their movements.

'Walkin' from place to place, be ye?' said the old lady. 'Then ye must stay wi' us to-night, an' I'll see ye have a good bed.'

A good bed! The scouts looked at each other in dismay. Perish the thought! They were not out to sleep in good beds.

'Haven't you a hay-loft?' asked d.i.c.k.

'Yes,' replied the miller. 'What of that?'

Again d.i.c.k explained. The miller and his wife were rather puzzled at the idea of the boys preferring the hay-loft, but they were willing that the scouts should do as they pleased; and that night the two comrades rolled themselves in their blankets, and slept snugly side by side in a nest of soft sweet hay.

The next morning they were up bright and early, intending to slip off before the people of the mill were astir; but they reckoned without the miller, who was up earlier still, and insisted that they should eat a good breakfast before they started. And when at last they struck the trail once more, they carried a huge packet of sandwiches the miller's wife had cut for them.

CHAPTER x.x.xV

A BROTHER SCOUT--THE TWO TRAMPS

It was mid-morning before they got the knots out of their neckties, for they followed quiet ways on which few people were to be met. Then they approached a small town entered by a steep hill. At the foot of the hill an old man was struggling to get a hand-cart loaded with cabbages up the slope. The scouts called upon him to ease up; then Chippy took the shafts, and d.i.c.k pushed at the side, and they ran the heavy hand-cart up the hill to the door of the greengrocer, whose shop the old man supplied from his little market-garden. At the top of the hill, as they rested to get their wind, a cheery-looking gentleman drove by in a dog-cart. He smiled at sight of them and their task, saluted, and called out; 'Well done, boy scouts!'

The comrades saluted him in return, and he drove off, waving his hand.

'I'll bet he's an instructor,' said Chippy.

'I shouldn't wonder,' returned d.i.c.k. 'He looked cheerful enough to be one of ours.'

They only stayed in the town long enough to despatch a post-card, of which d.i.c.k had a small stock in his haversack, to Bardon, to say all was well, then pushed on, and were soon in the open country once more.

Two miles out of the town they met a comrade. They were pa.s.sing a house standing beside the road, when a boy came out at the gate. He started and stared at sight of them, then gave the secret sign in full salute; for he had observed the badge on their hats, and knew them for patrol-leaders. They returned the salute, and the stranger stepped forward and held out his left hand. They shook hands, and he produced his badge.

'I'm No. 7 Midmead Owl Patrol,' he said. 'Midmead's about half a mile farther on. You'll see the village after you turn the next corner.'

He inquired where they had come from, and the Bardon boys told him, and they chatted for some time. The Owl was very deeply interested in their journey, and wished a hundred times he could go on such a tramp.

Finally he rushed back into the garden from which he had come. 'Wait a minute,' he said; but the scouts had to wait five minutes before he returned with his hat full of new potatoes.

'Look here,' he said. 'Jolly good, aren't they, for so early in the season? I've grown them in my own garden. I've got a piece of the garden, and I grow stuff, and sell it to buy all I want for scout work.

I've done splendidly with new potatoes. I sowed very early, and covered the tops with straw when there were any signs of frost, and got the first potatoes in the village, and made rattling good prices. Do take a few. They'll come in handy at your next camp.'

They thanked him, and Chippy stowed the potatoes away in his haversack.

Then their fellow scout, whose name was Jim Peel, accompanied them through Midmead and half a mile beyond.

At midday they halted, and built their fire, and overhauled their store of provisions. They had stayed their march beside a little brook, and in it they washed the potatoes, and then boiled them in their jackets in the billy. After the potatoes were boiled, they washed the billy, and then boiled more water, and made their tea. They were very hungry, for they had made a good long tramp during the morning, and the sandwiches which the miller's wife had given them, the new potatoes, and the tea went down very well. Then they stretched themselves at ease on the gra.s.s in the hot sun, with the idea of taking a good rest.

d.i.c.k spread out his map, and took his pencil to mark out the route of their morning's journey.

'We're all right, Chippy,' he said in a tone of deep satisfaction; 'we've broken the back of our journey. Look, we're between five and six miles from Newminster. That will be just a pleasant stroll this afternoon.'

'An' that 'ull mean three days each way,' said the Raven.

'That's it,' said d.i.c.k. 'We'll do it comfortably, Chippy, my boy.'

He carefully marked the track they had followed, then closed the map, and returned it to the haversack. Their haversacks lay at their feet between them and the dying fire; their staves were beside them. The two scouts now stretched themselves comfortably in the sun, drew their hats over their eyes, and discussed their own affairs.

'I say, Chippy, we're bound to have plenty of cash to see us through now,' said d.i.c.k, 'even if we have to spend steady on for the rest of the journey.'

'Rather,' replied Chippy; 'there's a lot o' flour left, an' some tea an' sugar, an' the bakin'-powder, an' the lump o' salt; an' we've only spent eleven three-fardens so fur.'

'Yes,' chuckled d.i.c.k. 'I can see father smiling now as he gave me the two half-sovereigns. I know as well as can be what he thought. He felt sure we should be back before now, with our ten shillings for way-money all blued. And one half-sovereign is in my belt, and almost all the other is in my purse.'

On the other side of the hedge below which the scouts lay, a couple of evil faces looked at each other with evil joy in their eyes. Every word the boys were saying was falling into the ears of a pair of big, burly tramps. One was a stout, middle-aged man, the other a tall young fellow with long legs; both belonged to the worst cla.s.s of that bad order.

When will this pest of lazy, loutish loafers, often brutal and dangerous, be cleared from our pleasant highways and byways? There are beautiful stretches of our country where it is not safe for women and children to stroll unattended through the quiet lanes, simply because the district lies on a tramps' route from one big town to another, and is infested by these worthless vagrants. There is nothing that dwellers in the country see with greater satisfaction than the conviction, slowly ripening in the public mind, that this tramp nuisance and danger must shortly be dealt with, and the firmer the hand the better. They are the people to shut up in compounds, where they should be made to do a few strokes of labour to earn their living, instead of terrorizing cottagers and dwellers in lonely houses for food and money. But now to our heroes and their experience with two members of this rascally order, feared and dreaded in every solitary neighbourhood.

We have said that the scouts had made their halt beside a brook. They had paused on the bridge where the brook ran under the road they were following, and had observed that a path turned from the road, pa.s.sed through a narrow gateway from which the gate was missing, and went along the bank. They had gone down the path some sixty or seventy yards, and had made their halt at a point where there was a strip of gra.s.s some ten yards wide between the hedge of a field and the bank of the brook.

Half an hour before the boys arrived, a pair of tramps had turned down the same quiet side track, intending to eat the food they had begged in a hamlet near at hand. They had gone some distance beyond the spot where the scouts halted, and did not discover the presence of the latter until they were on their way back to the high-road. The younger tramp was leading the way, and when he saw the boys lying on the bank with their haversacks at their feet, he stepped back into cover, and the two rascals took counsel with each other.

'Might be the price of a pint or two on 'em,' said the elder, a villainous-looking rogue, his tiny bloodshot eyes firing at the thought of drink.

'Mebbe,' said the other; and they went back a score of yards, found a gate, climbed over it into the field, and crept stealthily up on the other side of the hedge. Crouching behind the boys, they heard d.i.c.k speak of the money he had about him, and they looked at each other with evil, greedy joy on their scoundrel faces.

The a.s.sault was made at once, and through a gap close at hand. It was the stout, heavy man who led the way. With an agility no one would have suspected in his bulky, clumsy-looking figure, he bounded nimbly through the gap, caught up the haversacks, tossed them three yards to the other side of the fire, leapt the fire himself, then stood on guard between the haversacks and their owners. He was followed by the tall young man, who posted himself in front of the scouts, and threatened them with a heavy stick which he held in his hand.

The attack was so sudden, so unexpected, that the scouts, stretched comfortably at full length, could do no more than sit up before their enemies were in position.

'Kape still!' roared the long-legged tramp. 'If e'er a one on yer tries to get up, I'll land 'im one acrost the nut!'

It was quite clear that he was in very savage earnest, and the two scouts sat still and looked upon their foes.

The younger tramp was solemnly ferocious in looks, but the bulky, elder man was grinning all over his drink-blotched face, his broken yellow teeth all on view between purple lips. He had a huge bulbous nose, far ruddier than the cherry, and it shook as he laughed harshly at the captives.