"Oh! I guess I can limp along with the crutch," he said, smearing the dew of pain over his bedaubed face, now ghastly under the paint. "Go on; you're only wasting time!" Nixon drew the other's left arm with its moist cold hand around his neck--all the heat in Leon's body had gone to swell the thunderstorm in his ankle. And thus plowing, stumbling through the undergrowth, the scout's right hand keeping the impudent twigs from poking his companion's eyes out, they reached the narrow clearing along which the ambient light of a September sunset flowed like a golden river. No coveted log shanty, where at least they could encamp for the night, decorated it. But on its opposite side there loomed before the boys' eyes as they issued from the woods a great, lichen-covered rock, over twenty feet high, with a deep cavernous opening that yawned like a sleepy mouth at sunset as it swallowed the rays streaming into it. "Glory halleluiah! it's the Bear's Den--at last," ejaculated Leon, pain momentarily eclipsed. "Thanks, Nix: you're a horse!" as he withdrew his arm from his comrade's shoulders. "But that cave is about five miles from anywhere--from any opening in the woods! What on earth are we going to do now?" "Why! light a fire the first thing, I guess," returned the boy scout practically. CHAPTER VI THE FRICTION FIRE "We haven't got any matches to start a fire with!" Coombsie sat down in a pool of gold with the well-nigh empty basket beside him, and turned baffled eyes upon the others. "I have a few in a safety box in my pocket. Thank goodness! I didn't go back on our scout motto: 'Be Prepared!' so far as matches are concerned, anyway." Nixon felt in each pocket of his Norfolk jacket with a face that lengthened dismally under the smears of Varney's Paintpot. "_Gone!_" he ejaculated despairingly. "I must have lost the box!" "It probably dropped out of your pocket into the grass when I tied our coats round the chest-nut-tree, to prevent that young coon from 'lighting down,'" suggested Leon, and _his_ face grew pinched; it was not a refreshing memory that conjured up a picture of Raccoon Junior limping back to the hole among the ledges near Big Swamp, with a leg broken by his stone, at the moment when a fellow had a whole thunderstorm in his ankle. "Well! we're up against it now," gasped the scout. "We can't get out of the woods to-night; that's sure! We could sleep in the cave and be jolly comfortable too"--he stooped down and examined its wide interior--"if we only had a fire. But, without a camp-fire or a single blanket, we'll be uncomfortable enough when it comes on dark; these September nights are chilly." He threw his hat on the ground, drew his coat-sleeve across his ruddy forehead, rendering his bedaubed countenance slightly more grotesque than before. He had forgotten that it was smeared, forgotten paint and frolic. An old look descended upon his face.