“Very well!” agreed Hamilton White after a few moments’ reflection. “I might as well be hanged for a sheep as a wolf, but if anything happens here as a result I shall tell why. Remember that, Haley.”
“Oh, well, what’s a bag of peanuts more or less?” was the enigmatic reply of the Man from Seattle. “I’ll take a nip of sleep, if you don’t mind, and be on my way, but not _far_ away.”
The queer visitor took the blanket that had been given to him, and, walking back into the forest a short distance from the camp, lay down and went to sleep. The guide did not turn in at all, but sat silently in the shadows, rifle at his side, thinking and listening. Thus the rest of the night passed, and day began to dawn.
With the breaking of the day Hamilton White climbed the miniature mountain, and drawing a single-barreled glass from his pocket began studying the landscape. A tiny spiral of smoke about two miles to the north claimed his instant attention. He studied it for a few moments. At first the smoke was quite dark, then the spiral grew thin and gray as it waved lazily on the still morning air.
“Someone is building a breakfast fire,” he muttered. “And they know how to build a fire, too. That may be Haley’s crowd. Ah!”
As White slowly swept his glass around he discovered something else that aroused his keen interest. On a distant mountain a flag was being wigwagged. He could not see the operator of it, but he was able to follow the message that was being spelled out.
Another shift of his glass and a careful study of known localities enabled the guide to find the person who was receiving the message, and soon the receiver began answering with his signal flag.
Ham White grinned as he read both messages.
“The forest eyes of Uncle Sam!” he murmured. The signalers were forest lookouts whose eyes were constantly on the alert watching over the vast forest within their range for suspicious smokes, and they were having a friendly Sunday morning conversation over a distance of nearly four miles.
“If they knew they would be more careful of what they said,” he chuckled, then a few moments later he climbed down, returned to camp and started the breakfast fire. He fried some strips of bacon, put on the coffee, and then he sounded the breakfast call.