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  "I should say yes, it's rank as all get out," he remarked, holding his nose between a finger and thumb. "Even beats that fishy smell we struck when we looked down into the cellar at the cottage. Whew!"

  Others expressed themselves about as strongly, and little Jasper Merriweather, who had unwisely pushed into the shack, found it necessary to hurry out again, white of face and gasping.

  But Elmer had conceived an idea, even while suffering from the unpleasant odor of the place.

  "Howling cats!" exclaimed Lil Artha, "I don't see how you can stand it, Elmer. Talk to me about tramps, and the way they hate water, here's the rank evidence of it. Wow, ain't I sorry for poor Nat if he's got to associate with this hobo crowd for long!"

  "But how do we know they're hoboes?" asked Elmer, turning on the tall scout.

  "Hey? What's that?" exclaimed Lil Artha, actually so surprised that he neglected to hold that firm grip on his nose any longer.

  "What makes you so sure they're tramps?" pursued the scout master.

  "Why, goodness gracious alive, Elmer, you don't mean to say you doubt that now?" cried the tall boy, sweeping his hand around as though to draw attention to the various articles that seemed to stamp that theory a positive fact.

  "Seeing these things here is what makes me question that idea very much," began Elmer; and then he picked up one of the old shoes, to hold it at arm's length. "Look at that, fellows; never made in this country, and you know it. Hobnails such as no one but foreigners use on their shoes."

  "Well, I declare; I guess Elmer's right!" exclaimed Red.

  "He certainly is, suh, take my word foh it," was the way Chatz expressed himself.

  "Now look here, whoever saw a tramp's nest with anything like this in it?" and Elmer picked up a string of beads, evidently a rosary, that must have been overlooked in a hasty flight.

  "Whew, that's going some!" ejaculated Phil Dale who, with his cousin Landy, happened to be in the shack eager to see all that went on.

  "Perhaps he can even tell us what brand of foreigners these fellows are," remarked Landy, who was beginning to look upon Elmer pretty much in the light of a wizard.

  "Oh, that ought to be easy, fellows," said the young scout master, as he reached up and took down a worn letter his quick eye had noticed stuck in a crack.

  Every eye was immediately focused on the scout master. They knew his reasoning powers of old, and expected that Elmer would quickly put them on the right track now.

  Indeed, hardly had the latter glanced at the well-worn letter he held than he smiled.

  "What is it?" asked Red, impatiently.

  "Yes, tell us what you've found out, Elmer," said Lil Artha.

  "Why, look here at the name. As near as I can make out it's Giuseppi Caroni," replied the other.

  "Wow, that is plain enough!" exclaimed Red.

  "Sure Italiano," echoed the tall scout.

  "Just as I thought," replied Elmer.

  "But you can prove it," remarked Chatz.

  "That's easy enough," added Dr. Ted, "the thtamp ought to be enough, you thee."

  "And if it isn't, fellows, here's the postmark as plain as anything—Naples, Italy," continued Elmer.

  "Naples, hey?" remarked Lil Artha. "Say, I was just reading about Naples the other day, and it said that next to the island of Sicily we get more of our Black Hand crowd from there than any other part of Garibaldi's old land."

  A gasp seemed to go the complete rounds of all the khaki-clad warriors who thronged that mysterious little shack.

  "Black Hand, you say, Lil Artha?" exclaimed Red.

  "Yes, and anarchists, too; the kind that blow up the kings and queens of the Old World. The kind that abduct people so as to make their rich relatives whack up a big ransom."

  "Oh!"

  Some of the boys looked a little timid, and glanced around apprehensively, as though they anticipated seeing a whole bunch of fierce-looking dynamite users rise up around them.

  Others shut their teeth together harder than ever, and these more determined fellows, it might be noticed, tightened the grip they had upon their sticks.

  All eyes were turned again upon Elmer, who had listened to these remarks with an amused smile.

  "Hold on your horses, boys," he said, raising his hand just then to still the rising dispute.

  "Shut up, everybody; Elmer's got something more to tell us," Lil Artha cried.

  The hubbub died away, and an eagerness to listen took its place; for every one of them was anxious to pick up points concerning the clever way their leader figured things out.

  It was an important part of a scout's duty to learn how to read signs, not only when following a trail, but at all times.

  And especially valuable would this qualification become when confronted by a baffling mystery such as the Hickory Ridge troop was now up against.

  "Those who occupied this shack were four in number," Elmer began.

  "How did you find that out?" asked Red.

  "By the various tracks. So far as I could see there were just four separate kinds leading up to this place, and each one different."

  "Hurrah! I tell you, fellows, that's the way to learn things. Elmer knows how to do it," cried Lil Artha.

  Without even smiling at the implied compliment Elmer went on:

  "Two of them wore shoes with hobnails just as you see on this old cast-off shoe here. A third one had on American-made brogans, and I expect they hurt him some, too, because he was limping as he walked. He is undoubtedly the chap who used to own these old foreign-made gun-boats."

  "Hold on a minute, please, Elmer," pleaded Red.

  "All right. You want to ask me something, and I think I know what it is," remarked the other.

  "You say this fellow's new shoes hurt him, and made him limp; please tell us how in the wide world you ever found that out?" Red continued.

  "Well, it might be possible that the fellow was always lame, but his tracks show plainly that he limped. Something was wrong with his left leg or foot, because the toe dug deeply into the ground."

  "Well, I declare is that dead-sure evidence, Elmer?" demanded the astounded tenderfoot, Landy, who was listening with all his might to these intensely interesting facts as brought out by the scout master.

  "Try it yourself sometime, Landy," remarked Elmer. "Pick out a nice piece of ground where the marks will show plainly. Limp as naturally as you can with the left leg. Then go back and examine the trail. You will find that not only does the left foot dig deeper at the toe than the right one, but that same toe drags a little over the ground as you bring the left foot forward each time."

  "Just listen to that, will you!" remarked Red, "but I know Elmer is right. I can grab the principle of the thing."

  "But how about the fourth one, Elmer; seems to me you've been holding back something there, that you mean to spring on us," said Lil Artha.

  "Well, I have," remarked the other, quickly. "This fourth track was smaller than the others, and the person also wore American-made shoes."

  "Ah, a boy, eh?" asked Red.

  The scout master shook his head.

  "Wrong that time, my boy. You'll have to guess again, I reckon," he said.

  "Was it a woman, Elmer?" demanded Lil Artha.

  "Just what it was—an Italian woman, squatty like most of her race; and I should say between fifty-five and sixty years of age," Elmer replied, soberly.

  * * *

  CHAPTER IX.

  SETTING A TRAP.

  At that there arose new exclamations of wonder, as well as of disbelief.

  "Oh, come off, now," remarked Red, quite forgetting in his amazement the respect supposed to be shown for an acting scout master, even though in the private walks of life he might only be a fellow playmate; "you can't expect us to swallow that, now, Elmer."

  "Do you mean about the woman's height, or her age?" asked the other, calmly.

  "Why—er—both I guess," faltered Red, weakening as he saw the positive front of the other.

&nbs
p; "Stop and think, did you ever see any other than a short, squatty woman among the Italian laborers? And I reckon nobody else ever did. They carry heavy burdens on their heads, and people say that's one reason they're always dumpy," Elmer began.

  "He's right, fellows," broke out Landy; "why, I've seen a dago woman carrying a mattress, a stove and some chairs on her head all at the same time. Gee, looked like a two-legged moving van:"

  "But see here, you notice a shelf with a few things on it, some hairpins among the lot. It was built unusually low, so she could reach it. And what's this you see here, fellows? A piece of broken looking glass fastened to the wall. Notice how low down it is? No man ever used that glass, you can depend on it; and the woman who did was surely small, wasn't she now?"

  "A regular sawed-off," assented Lil Artha, emphatically.

  "Elmer's sure proved his point there, fellows," declared Red Huggins, grinning.

  "But what makes you think the woman is old, Elmer?" asked Landy, curiously.

  "That's so; how in the wide world could you know such a thing without ever seeing her?" demanded Toby.

  "Nothing could be easier, fellows; see here!"

  As Elmer spoke he reached out his hand and took something off the low shelf.

  Those in the room crowded around, fairly wild to follow out the clever deduction of their young leader.

  "Why, it's a comb," cried one.

  "Only an old broken comb," echoed another, with a shade of uncertainty in his voice.

  "What is there about that to tell you, Elmer?" queried Red, staring first at the article in question, and then at the smiling scout master.

  "I know," burst out Matty just then.

  "Tell us," pleaded several.

  "Yes, throw some light on the dark mystery," added Lil Artha, "because to the untrained eye it's all as gloomy as the inside of my pocket. A comb, and how to tell a woman's age from that! Well, I own up beat."

  "Why, it's as easy as falling off a log, or coming down in a smash when you're first learning how to fly," Matty began.

  "Hey, don't you drag me into this thing," spoke up Toby, whose many experiments as a new beginner in the science of aviation had usually ended in his enjoying a disastrous tumble.

  "All you have to do is to examine the comb," Matty went on. "Then you'll find that it holds a few long hairs, and, fellows, just see how gray they are, will you?"

  "Well, what d'ye think of that!" burst out Red. "And I guess we're a lot of chumps, fellows, not to have seen through it before."

  "Would a woman be among anarchists, Elmer?" demanded Toby.

  "Oh, I don't know," came the reply. "Perhaps so, though not as a usual thing. But understand that I haven't said I agreed with you altogether, when you gave such a hard name to these people."

  "Then you don't count 'em as Black Hand kidnapers, who expect to raise a bully good sum by holding our pard, Nat Scott, for ransom?" demanded Red.

  "I've seen nothing to tell me that's the way matters stand," Elmer commenced saying, "and several things seem to say just the opposite. The presence of the woman, and her having such an article as this precious string of beads don't seem to go along with such a thing as a band of rascals."

  "Yes, yes, go on, Elmer," several called out.

  "We haven't found the slightest sign of a bomb factory here, or even a book teaching how to bring about a revolution. These things make me believe that these three men and a woman may not be such terribly hard cases after all."

  "But you believe they've got our chum, and are holding him a prisoner, don't you, Elmer?" asked Matty.

  "I do believe it," Elmer went on. "In fact I know it, because if you look back of that empty box yonder, which they use for a table, you'll find a hat—Nat's hat, if I'm not mistaken."

  A rush was made for the box in question, and there followed a confusion of tongues, as half a dozen fellows tried to talk at once.

  "You found a hat, didn't you?" demanded Elmer.

  "We sure did, and here she is," cried Red, holding up the article in question.

  "It looks like a scout's regulation hat?" Elmer remarked.

  "Which nobody could deny," sang Lil Artha.

  "And as every scout present has his own hat on his head right now, it stands to reason this couldn't belong to any of us, eh, fellows?"

  "To clinch the matter, Elmer," observed Matty, "if you look inside the hat you'll find two little silver letters fastened there. The N. S. stands for Nathaniel Scott."

  "Well, that point seems proved. Nat was here. Perhaps in wandering about he struck this place. But the indications are he was captured first, and brought to this shack."

  "But," said hasty Red, interrupting Elmer, "if you admit that these Italians have made our pard a prisoner, how can you say they are not bad men, thieves wanted by the officers of the law, even if not anarchists?"

  "Some things I can only guess at, without being able to explain my conviction. But, honestly, fellows, I hardly think these people are as bad as you make out. I know blackmail is practiced over in Italy a lot. And that one of the favorite ways to get money is to kidnap the son or daughter of a rich man, and demand a heavy ransom. But in this case they would hardly pick Nat Scott for a pigeon to be plucked. His father is only a schoolmaster. There are others here who would seem to be more attractive bait."

  "Hear, hear!" cried Lil Artha, casting a meaning look in the direction of Larry Billings, whose father, being a banker, was reckoned the richest man in all Hickory Ridge.

  "But ain't we wasting a heap of time here?" asked Red, impatient as always to be doing something.

  "That's just what I was saying to Ted here," declared Larry, whom the meaning glance of Lil Artha had plainly rendered uneasy.

  "You may think so," remarked Elmer, "but this is a case of the more haste the less speed. I reckon it's wise for us to make sure about the character of these Italians before we go to chasing after them. They're an excitable lot, you know, and we might bring on trouble that could just as well be avoided if we went slow."

  Matty looked at his leader sharply.

  "Say, see here, Elmer," he remarked, "you know, or anyhow you've got a pretty good hunch, who these people are?"

  "Why, yes, Italians," laughed the other.

  "Now, that ain't what I mean," Matty went on. "No dodging, but own up."

  "You're wrong there," Elmer said. "I don't know, and my suspicions so far are founded on such slight evidence that I don't care to commit myself before the whole of you—yet."

  "But from what you said just now," Matty continued, "you don't seem to agree with the rest of us when we call these Italians anarchists."

  "Because there hasn't been a solitary thing to prove it. We pathfinders must always discover some trace of the trail, or else we'd go astray. And I've owned up that I'm more than half inclined to believe these people are not the bad lot you'd make out."

  "But they've got our chum a prisoner," said Red.

  "Looks that way," assented Elmer, cheerfully.

  "And honest men would never do a thing like that," declared Red.

  "Oh, wouldn't they?" replied the other. "Perhaps now the shoe might be on the other foot."

  "Eh?"

  "And perhaps these honest people might suspect that you three fellows in uniform represented the great United States army about to surround them, and make them prisoners because they had been occupying private property here at Munsey's mill."

  The scouts looked at one another, astonished. Here was a theory then which had never appealed to them before.

  "Well, I declare!" gasped Red.

  "Don't it just beat the Dutch how he gets on to all these things?" said Lil Artha.

  "But, Elmer, why take poor Nat a prisoner, bottle him up so he couldn't call for help, fetch him to this old shack, and finally carry him off when they light out!"

  It was Matty who asked this question. Elmer smiled and shook his head.

  "I can figure out a lot of things," he said, "just as I can read India
n writing; but please don't expect me to tell you what people think. I only know that these Italians were surely frightened at the sudden appearance of three fellows in khaki, and that they probably took them for soldiers. They must have had some idea in view when they captured Nat, and hustled him to this shack. Perhaps they only meant to hide here until the rest of us had gone."

  "And they got more scared when you sounded that bugle, I reckon," remarked Lil Artha.

  "Yes, and then the coming of another bunch of six scouts may have made them believe the worst was about to happen," Elmer continued.

  "Say, I thought I heard low voices when I was just going to peep in that window there, and the bugle called me back to duty," Landy spoke up.

  "Yes," Elmer added; "and it may be the coming of Landy just finished their panic. After he went away they must have vamosed the ranch in a hurry."

  "Well, all this is mighty interesting, sure," declared Red, with an appreciative nod, "but it ain't bringing us any closer to finding our chum Nat."

  "Yes, what's the programme, Elmer?" asked Chatz. "Do we take up the trail right away, and try to follow these heah rascals to their new camp? You can count on all of us, suh, to do the troop credit."

  "There may be another way," remarked Elmer, who seemed to be pondering over the matter.

  "Tell us about it, then, please."

  "Sometimes it's the best policy to hike after an enemy as fast as you can put. Then again, there are other times when a whole lot can be won just by waiting for the enemy to come to you."

  "That's so, fellows," declared Matty; "I see what Elmer means. He thinks that if we hid out here, we'd be able to bag the whole blooming crowd soon."

  "Sounds all right in theory," admitted Red, "but for one I'd like to know why Elmer believes that push will come back after a little."

  "I only feel pretty sure on one point," explained the acting scout master. "And that concerns the woman alone."

  "Meaning, I take it, that you think they'll send her back, the cowards, to find out whether the coast is clear," ventured Red.

  "No, they will never have to send her back, fellows," Elmer went on, positively.

  "Won't, eh?" remarked Lil Artha.