. I guess in the daytime it would be easy enough to keep the
trail in those places, but at night, we had some job.

In one of those places we heard a sound as if some one was moving and we an
stopped short and looked around. Pretty soon Dorry whispered for me to
look, and he pointed to a dark thing kind of sneaking away.

Harry called, "Who's there?"

There wasn't any answer and the man, or whatever it was, was gone. It was
so dark we couldn't see which way he had gone.

Harry said, "That's funny; this is a queer place to meet anybody."

Will Dawson said, "I guess it was just a tramp."

"Or a leopard," Tom Warner said.

"Or maybe a _what-is-it_," Charlie Seabury chimed in.

Anyway, we didn't want to run any risk of losing the trail, so we didn't
bother about him, but kept on up the mountain.

The higher we got, the worse it was. There was what we call mongrel forest,
tall trees and thick brush underneath. But it was straight going now,
without any up and down places. The trail was easy to follow, only we had
to go in single file, the first fellow (that was Harry), keeping it by
holding a lantern low.

Pretty soon he stopped and said, "There's brush burning somewhere around
here; I can smell it."

Ralph Warner said, "_Listen_."

We all stood stark still and just as plain as could be, I could hear a
crackling sound quite a way off.

"I don't smell it now," I said; "I did a little while ago."

"Wait till the breeze is this way," Harry said, and then, in just a minute
we got a good whiff of it--strong, just like when I burned the leaves on
our lawn at home. Then all of a sudden I couldn't smell it at all. Dorry
tied his scout scarf on a stick and held it up, and when it blew out
straight we got a strong whiff, and the crackling was louder. Sometimes it
blew around the other way, up the mountain. Sometimes we couldn't smell
anything at all, but mostly we could hear the crackling a little. It was
too dark to see any smoke and there wasn't any blaze. Harry said he guessed
it was pretty far away. He said the breeze could carry the smell a long
distance.

"It couldn't carry the sound so far, though," I said.

"Trouble is, a stiff breeze can carry most anything," Harry said; "well,
let's move along and rescue the maidens."

Just then Hunt Manners said, "_Listen!_"

Far off we could hear the whistle of a locomotive and a kind of rattling,
not very clear, but I knew it was the rattling of a train.

"That's 'w