Page:Castlemon--Joe Wayring at Home.djvu/405

 thought so too. Before they had gone fifty yards, the former suddenly stopped and whispered to the man next behind him—

"We are close upon them. I smell smoke."

"And I smell coffee," replied the man to whom the words were addressed, and who sniffed the air as if he were trying to locate the camp by the aid of his nose instead of his eyes, "and bacon."

Shaking his hand warningly at the men behind him, the guide moved forward again with long, noiseless strides. Presently he discovered a thin blue cloud of smoke rising above the bushes close in front of him. He looked at it a moment, and then dashed ahead at the top of his speed, his eager companions following at his heels.

A few hasty steps brought them to the little cleared spot in a thicket of evergreens in which Matt Coyle had made his camp. On one side of it was a lean-to with a roof of boughs, and on the other was the fire, with a battered coffee pot simmering and sputtering beside it. Scattered about over the ground were several slices of half-fried bacon, which had been