He was desperately tired. Every muscle of his body ached. His head was confused too from long wandering among the trees; his thoughts seemed to skip back into the woods away from him; he felt himself stalking them as Blink would stalk a rabbit. But there was one thing more alive in him at that moment than ever before, a sense of protective responsibility. With Leon disabled and the two younger boys completely worn out, it rested with him alone to turn a night in the Bear's Den into a mere "corking" adventure, or to let it drag by as a dark age of discomfort with certainly bad results for two of the party. Nixon had felt Leon's hand as it slipped from his neck at the edge of the clearing, it was clammy as ice; his first-aid training as a scout told him that the injured lad would feel the cold bitterly during the night. Starrie Chase would probably "stick it out without squealing," as in such circumstances he would try to do himself. But it would be a hard experience. And young Colin's clothing was still sodden from his partial immersion in Big Swamp. It was one of those moments for the Scout of the U.S.A. when the potential father in the boy is awake. "I've _got_ to fix things up for the night, somehow," he wearily told himself aloud. "I wonder--I wonder if I could manage to start a fire without matches--with 'rubbing-sticks'? I did it once when we were camping out with our scoutmaster. But he helped me. If I could only get the fire, now, 'twould be a--great--stunt!" "'Start a fire without matches!' You're crazy!" Colin and Coombsie looked sideways at him; they had heard of people being "turned round" in their heads by much woodland wandering. "Shut up, you two!" commanded Leon, suddenly imperious. "He knows what he's about. He did a good stunt in helping me along here." "If I could only find the right kinds of wood to start a friction fire--balsam fir for the fireboard and drill, and a little chunk of cedarwood to be shredded into tinder!" The boy scout was eagerly scanning the trees on either side of the grass-grown logging-road, trees which at this moment seemed to have their roots in the forest soil and their heads in Heaven's own glory. "_There's_ a fir-tree! Among those pines--a little way along the road!" Leon spoke in that slow, stiff voice, sprained by pain. "Perhaps I can help you--Nix?" "No, you lie still, but chuck me your knife, it's stronger than mine! I ought to have two tools for preparing the 'rubbing-sticks,' so the Chief Scout tells us in our book, but I'll have to get along somehow with our pocketknives." Nix Warren was off up the road as he spoke; hope, responsibility, and ambition toward the performance of a "great stunt," forming a fighting trio to get the better of weariness. The glory was waning from the tree-tops when he returned, bearing with him one sizeable chunk of balsamic fir-wood and a long stick from the same tree.