“Perhaps I’d better go with him,” Harry ventured.
“No you won’t!” Jimmie said. “I’m going out alone, and I’m going to c-r-e-e-p and c-r-e-e-p and c-r-e-e-p through the bushes like one of J. Fennimore Cooper’s foresters.”
“Robin Hood would have been stuck on you!” grinned Frank.
“You bet he would!” Jimmie insisted gravely. “Me and Robin Hood would have had some great times together in Lincoln forest.”
“Go on, then, you little runt!” Jack exclaimed. “Go on and get back as soon as possible, for we’re all anxious to get on the hunt for Ned.”
Jimmie laughed and disappeared in the pines lower down on the slope. He walked steadily to the east and north for, perhaps, half an hour and then began a series of operations which even his friends might not have understood at the beginning.
Stopping at the foot of a granite finger which thrust a broad surface half way up to the tops of the pines, he began gathering dry boughs. After a great heap had been secured, he carried them with great exertion to the top of the elevation. It was necessary for him to make several trips up and down the steep side of the rock but at last two great heaps of perfectly dry boughs lay on the hard surface of the cliff.
One more trip to the bottom he made, to return with a great back load of green pine boughs. Then he sat down, panting, and regarded his work with no little satisfaction.
“I don’t know,” he mused, wiping the perspiration from his forehead, “but I ought to climb one of these trees. I’d do it, too, only I’m afraid I couldn’t get the fires into line on the boughs.”
He heaped the dry boughs into neat, compact array and then covered them heavily with the green branches. This done, he set fire to each of the two piles and sat down to await results.
The flames ate fast into the dry faggots and the green boughs above made such a white smudge as had rarely been seen in that vicinity.
“There,” the boy mused, “there’s two towering columns of smoke! In Indian talk, they mean ‘I want some one to come and help me out of a mess,’ and that is what the two smudges say in Boy Scout language, too. Now I wonder if anyone save the lads at the camp will see and understand. I hope the kids at the cave will recognize this as an invitation to the bearer of the note alone, and not directed to themselves.”