ottom I _smelled_ smoke! I stopped short, and sniffed. It was wood
smoke--camp smoke. I must be near that camp-fire. And away off I could
hear water running. That was toward my left, so probably the smoke was
on my left, for a camp would be near water. It is hard to get direction
just by smell, but I turned and scouted along the side of the gulch,
halfway up, sniffing and looking.

The brush was bad. It was as thick as hay and full of stickers, but I
worked my way through. If the camp was the camp of the beaver man with
the message, I must reconnoiter and scheme; if it was the camp of
somebody else, I would go down; and if I didn't know whose camp it was,
I must wait and find out.

The brush held me and tripped me and tore my trousers and shirt, and was
wet and hot at the same time. Keeping high, I worked along listening and
sniffing and spying--_feeling_ for that camp, if it was a camp. Pretty
soon I heard voices. That was encouraging--unless the beaver man had
company. The brush thinned, and the gulch opened, and I was at the mouth
of it, with the water sounding louder. On my stomach I looked out and
down--and there was the place of the camp, at the mouth of the gulch,
where the pines and spruces met a creek, and two boys were just leaving
it. They had packs on their backs, and they were dressed in khaki and
were neat and trim.

Down I went, sliding and leaping, head first or feet first, I didn't
care which, as long as I got there in time. The boys heard and turned
and stared, wondering. With my hands and face scratched, and my chest
skinned and my shirt and trousers torn, bearing my bow and my broken
arrow, like a wild boy I burst out upon them. Then suddenly I saw on the
sleeves of their khaki shirts the Scout badge. My throat was too dry and
my breath was too short for me to say a word, but I stopped and made the
Scout sign. They answered it; and they must have thought that I was
worse than I really was, because they came running.

"The Elk Patrol, Colorado," I wheezed.

"The Red Fox Patrol, New Jersey," they replied. "What's the matter?"

"I'm glad to meet you," I said, silly after the run I had made on an
empty stomach; and we laughed and shook hands hard.

They were bound to hold me up or examine me for wounds or help me in
some way, but I sat down of my own accord, to get my breath.

They were First-class Scouts of the Red Fox Patrol of New Jersey, and
were traveling through this way on foot, from Denve