“No, no! We’d only give them a fine chance to bore us full of holes. They don’t want to be surprised, you can bet. But we can stalk them, as we do bear on high ground, and work the bird call so as to make them think nobody’s around in our direction. Are you on?”
“I am! Say, I guess you are Indian all right. You lead off--and I’ll follow and do just as you do, as near as I can.”
“Only be careful where you put your hands and knees. Don’t crack any sticks nor roll any stones. Ready?”
Clem wondered at first whether the method would prove successful. It loomed up like a large undertaking, considering the distance. Would it not be better to just march right up on the spies and trade gun-fire with them, if need be? But the farther the boys progressed the more Clem became convinced that this was the only means of surprising the enemy. The nature of the ground was such that any one walking boldly up could have been seen first by the spies, and held up or shot. Fortunate, indeed, was it that this fellow Duncan was on the hill. Truly a wonderful chap when it came to this sort of thing.
Slowly they went, on hands and knees, for another fifty feet or more, stopping every little while to listen, and Duncan made a soft twittering sound exactly like the little bird in the thicket below. Presently he rose cautiously to take a look and get the bearings, after which he turned and put his lips to Clem’s ear.
“Man on watch about a hundred feet from us, sitting on a rock. He don’t look this way. I think I’d better edge off a little and work around so as to come up on the other chap, and you work up nearer this one, behind the thicket. When I yell he’ll turn and then you’ve got him. Wait till I yell.”
There is little doubt that this plan would work out well. The German mind can not cope in matters of woodcraft and ambush with that of an American backwoodsman. Duncan wormed himself away and Clem could not detect a sound made in his progress. Hardly more than fifteen minutes would be required for him to gain his object, but in less than five minutes a whistle sounded up the hill. The watcher ran that way and there was the buzz of a self-starter and the whir of a motor. Before the bushwhackers had time to collect their senses the long car, with its lights on, was running back across the field.