Chapter XII: The Tracking Expedition

A week had passed. Saturday had come, and the Cup was not yet found.

It had been, perhaps, the most sobering week that Betty had ever spent in her life. For, after the meeting with Sybil in the school wood, she had taken the head girl’s words to heart and had tried to go about everyday things as quietly and evenly as she could and in an everyday manner. The other juniors might look at her curiously now and again as though wondering whether Betty had forgotten. But she had not. At almost every moment of the day she remembered that her helter-skelter ways and lack of control had more than probably been the cause of the loss of the Cup. But she was “trying not to fuss,” for she had learned a lesson which she would never forget, and she had formulated, too, in the wood the preceding evening, a principle that she would never lose sight of through all her schooldays to come. She meant to work on and on, “hastening slowly” until some day she saw herself, like Sybil, helping some smaller Guide than herself to higher courage and greater endeavour. She would never forget Sybil’s words to her in the wood: they went to hold a place--though the head girl certainly did not guess it--among the “secret beautiful things” in Betty’s heart which might never be spoken about to any one at all.

Not that, after that evening, Betty had come much into contact with the head girl. She had barely met Sybil again that week at all. Only at meal-times in the distance, and during the head girl’s duty hours as prefect, did the two meet. And to all outward appearances Betty’s life went on just as before the loss of the Cup; for though naturally its loss was the chief subject of every conversation, nobody connected her name with the loss, nor suggested by look or word that there might be any such connection. It was not until after some days had passed that she herself dared to broach the subject, which was always uppermost in her mind, to Gerry, her friend.

“Gerry, do they think some one saw me cleaning it, and then stole it?”

Gerry nodded. “Well, it does seem like that. All the girls have talked it over. It couldn’t very well have gone any other way. Rene suggested a jackdaw, but that’s silly, of course, for the Cup is too heavy. But it could easily have been lifted down from the shelf by any one who climbed in from the wood. And if any one saw you sitting there and cleaning it, and then saw you put it back--” Gerry stopped and looked awkward.

“But--” Betty spoke humbly--“but oh, I know, of course, that I should have asked permission, and that I didn’t. But, Gerry, nobody ever trespasses in the school wood. What should bring them there just that one day? Nobody would dare to because of Witch’s Wood being so near. So it does seem strange.”

“I know.” Gerry nodded agreement. “Miss Carey told the police, though, and some of them looked in the wood. There were traces, I heard Doron say, as though some one had been there. ‘Sign,’ you know. And they think that a tramp must have been resting there, and probably that he was a stranger and didn’t know the silly stories about Witch’s Wood. It couldn’t possibly be a villager, for none of them would dare to.”

“It does seem like that,” sighed Betty.

There was nothing for it after that but just to “keep on keeping on,” and to keep on hoping against hope too, though the chances of the Cup’s return seemed now very slight. With the near approach of Saturday, however, the spirits of the dormitory juniors rose.

“It’s terribly appropriate just to be happening to have a tracking expedition,” remarked Mona. “Suppose--just suppose we found the Cup!”

“Hidden in a hole by a tramp, d’you mean?” suggested Rene.

“Yes; or something like that. Wouldn’t it be simply glorious to bring the tramp to justice! Just like a book. We might get a Guide medal from headquarters, I should think.”

“You wouldn’t. It sounds terribly un-Guidy to say that it’s glorious to put tramps into prison,” put in Gerry. She turned to Betty for support.

“You mean friends of all the world?” said Betty shyly. “Yes, I think so too.”

“Well, I must say!” Mona flared up at once. “All I can tell you is, then--and Rene thinks the same--that we two would do anything for the sake of the patrol and for Sybil and everything. We’d do _anything_ to get the Cup back. And if Betty, of all people----”

“You know perfectly well that Betty’s as keen to get it back as you are,” flared up Gerry in return.

A grim silence fell on the cubicles. Brushes could be heard in vigorous use from the four corners of the room.

Matters were still rather strained and the subject was a chilly one between the couples next day. Sybil, however, who with Eve--her second--and Doris, Jean and Lilian, the older Guides of the patrol, was to head the expedition, was certainly in no mood to notice petty trifles such as Tenderfoot feuds. The patrol was marched out in business-like fashion on to the moor, and the practice began.

Vigorous, practical, and to the point, was the scheme of the afternoon’s work. The Tenderfoots were taken in hand first by the captain herself, and received a preliminary lesson in stalking and sign-reading.

“Red Indians are wonders,” said Sybil; “there are no tracking secrets hidden from them. They will lie in wait for hours; and the crumpling of a leaf or the shade of difference in a sound means everything to them sometimes. Their food depends on their scouting, you see, and their family’s food. They learn ‘stalking’ because they would die if they did not understand how to stalk. In our country, too, keepers and others look for ‘sign’ from morning till night. In the war, you’ll remember, scouting played a tremendous part.”

“I say, Sybil, gipsies leave ‘sign’ behind,” put in Mona, as they all squatted on the grass.

“Yes, they do. _Patrin_, they call it. And the gipsies can follow each other just because of it. It helps them more than we’d understand, I expect, since they are roaming all the time. I’ve seen broom-making gipsies sitting on the backs of their caravans and throwing down sometimes a bundle of twigs, and marking their road along from one town to another in that way. A regular trail is left behind; but only just plainly enough trailed, of course, for a watchful person to see.”

“The ones that camp on the moor here make baskets, you know,” put in Mona.

“Well, we are going to do something in the _patrin_ line this afternoon,” put in Sybil. “It’s much the same thing. You must all learn by following some definite clues, for we don’t want one of you, even a mascot, to get lost in a wood again. Eve and Lilian are going to lay down ‘sign,’ or _patrin_, or whatever you like to call it, and you four are to follow the scent. They have started already and are laying trail, and you must try to follow on, after they have had a fair start, and track them. Try to track the way they went by noticing any scraps of ‘sign’ they may leave; not only over the next two ridges of the moor, but all the way, try to keep exactly on their trail. It is a very simple test, and you may have an hour for it. Then come back here and bring reports. Afterwards, Eve will go over the ground with you and tell you what you have missed and where you went wrong. Remember to ‘hasten slowly’; you will miss a lot, possibly, by hurrying.”

The four started off.

It was glorious. The sun blazed down from overhead; the grass was baking underfoot. Betty’s eyes were wide with eagerness as she and Gerry made their way off together. Eve was even now returning behind the second ridge: and they were to bring back an account of every bit of “sign” she had left _en route_. The first “scent” was a footprint, imbedded deeply, and evidently on purpose, in a piece of upturned turf. Gerry, Mona, and Rene discovered it in chorus.

“Pointing east. She’s gone that way. Is it Eve’s or Lilian’s?”

“Lilian is wearing tackets in her boots and Eve isn’t, I noticed. The footprint must be Eve’s.”

On they went.

There followed, with a yard or two between, more and more traces of “sign”--a tiny bit of paper crumpled up, which proved to be half of an envelope addressed to Lilian; a tiny scrap of patrol ribbon; more footprints; a lock of Eve’s hair!

On and on went the practice. Suddenly, just as the top of the second ridge was reached, Mona, who was a pace ahead, gave a little shout.

“Rene, I say.”

“What is it?” called Gerry.

But the others were whispering eagerly. They were bending down and didn’t answer.

“It’s a _patrin_. It must be a real one. A bundle of sticks pointing this way,” said Mona at last. “Rene says she is sure she saw more of it farther back, but she thought it was some of Eve’s ‘sign.’ Well, _this_ can’t be, I’m certain. It must be the _patrin_ of some gipsies on the moor.”

Gerry and Betty hung eagerly over the “sign.”

There was no doubt of it. A little bundle of rushes still fresh and green lay there.

“And close to the moor path,” shouted Mona. “It was flung here from a passing caravan. There are marks of the wheels too, and the horse’s feet.”

“I say,” Gerry called after them, “you’re leaving the ridge.”

But the excitement was by this time intense. Mona and Rene were wild with eagerness.

“We’ll have to. We’re going to follow. Suppose they’ve got the Cup! Sybil said to come back in an hour, and it’s not half an hour yet. If you’ll come along we can all go together, and be back by the time the others do. If we run back to ask leave, she’ll probably not be there; and we shall never catch up with the caravan.”

“But what are you going to do? And why should they have the Cup?” demanded Gerry. “And besides, it’s a practice; and we’ve got Eve’s ‘sign’ to follow.”

“‘_Why?_’ It’s more than likely that they’ve got it,” almost stamped Mona. “And if you don’t care about the Cup, Rene and I _do_! I must say, after last night, any one would think that you two----”

Mona was off.

“I’m not going,” said Gerry, sitting down on the ridge. “Betty, you’re not to either. We might go back to Sybil and ask; but she’s given us the orders, and----”

The couples parted company.

But there was little enjoyment in searching after “sign” when Mona and Rene had gone. The others heard several shouts of excitement as two more bunches of the _patrin_ were picked up; then the adventurous pair disappeared from view.

“I’m perfectly sure,” said Gerry, after almost half an hour more had gone, as she and Betty were just preparing to slip over the ridge, “that they ought not to have gone. But----”

They had been seated for a while on the topmost ridge, counting up their “sign” discoveries in preparation for their return. It was just as they had finished that they heard the sound of a step behind them.

“Oh, you’s the other two young ladies, is yer?” said a voice. Betty and Gerry turned. “Well, an’ I’ll trouble you to come along.”

As they stared with amazement their gaze fell upon a gipsy boy, who stood there, tall and handsome, but with an insolent lowering look upon his face.