So Dick himself attended to the horse.  Dan was already gathering firewood, which Dave piled into the stove in the wagon.

Soon water was boiling, coffee was being ground, tins opened, and a general air of comfort and good fellowship prevailed in that forest.

“We’ll have to give you the palm for being a good trainer, Dick,” declared Tom, taking a bite out of a sandwich and following it with a sip of coffee, “but you have one short-coming.  You’re no fortune teller.  So, as you can’t foretell the future, I vote that, after this, we breakfast in the morning and swim later in the day.  It would affect my heart in time, if we had to battle every morning for our breakfast in this fashion.”

“I can’t get over the impudence of those tramps,” muttered Darry, as he set his coffee cup down.  “They couldn’t hope to get away with the horse and wagon and sell them in these days of the rural telephone.  They couldn’t use our clothing for themselves.  And yet they stole all we had in order to get hold of our food.  At that, they didn’t care what became of us, or how long we had to travel about in these woods without food or clothing.”

“The tramps must be optimists,” laughed Prescott.  “Probably they had an abiding faith that all would turn out well with us, and so proposed to help themselves to what they needed.”

“I wonder whether they’ll fool with our outfit again,” pondered Tom grimly, “if they come across it in our absence.”

“I don’t know,” said Dick gravely.  “As you’ve already reminded me, I am no foreteller of the future.”

CHAPTER VIII

When the peddler was “Frisked”

It was a hot and dusty road that lay before them when they again took up their march that day.

Yet Dick Prescott insisted that, despite the late start, they must count upon covering twenty miles for that second day.

At night they halted on the edge of woods so far from the nearest farm house that Prescott did not consider it necessary to hunt up the owner and ask permission.

“Now, we’ll have to see if we can find water here,” Dick proposed.  “Let’s scatter, and the fellow who finds drinkable water must let out a yell to inform the others.”

“I’ll save you some trouble,” Reade offered.  “You fellows needn’t hunt water at all.  Give me the buckets and I’ll go and get it.”

“Have you been in this part of the country before?” asked Dick.

“No; and I don’t need to have been here before in order to know that this ground is full of water,” replied Reade, who was full of practical knowledge of that sort.  “If I were a civil engineer, out with a field party, I’d mark this section ‘water’ on the map.  Look at the ground here under the trees.  It’s as moist as can be.”

Tom departed, but barely two minutes had elapsed when he was back with two pailfuls of water as clear as crystal.