"What's happened, d'ye think?" one gasped, looking frightened; for he had a brother in the contest, and his first fear was that something had happened to him. "One of the boys must have been badly hurt! Perhaps they've come for the ambulance to fetch him home!" "Aw, get out! What's the use talkin' that way, Jim? However could they get knocked out that way?" "Besides, ain't Nat and Toby been over at Fairfield all day under orders? Must be news from that place. Perhaps Matt Tubbs has gone back to his old ways again and plans to do our fellows up on the road!" "Matt Tubbs is all right, and don't you forget it. Here, quit your pushin', and give a feller a chance to get in near Elmer!" Meanwhile Elmer had waited until the two scouts had saluted, as they had been taught to do when meeting a superior officer; since respect to authority is one of the cardinal principles to which the tenderfoot subscribes when he first joins a patrol. "Have you just come from Fairfield, Number Four?" Elmer asked, turning first to Toby, who belonged to the Wolf Patrol, which was under his own particular care as patrol leader. "Yes, sir; been there all day," replied Toby, who was breathing rather hard, as though he might have been having trouble with his machine on the road, and had found it necessary to do considerable wrestling with it in order to make the old tub behave. "You were dispatched there by our scout master, in order to watch the start of the Fairfield scouts, and be able to give a detailed report of the same?" Elmer continued. "Just what we were, sir; but that was not the whole extent of our instructions," Toby went on. "I believe you were also told to stay around during the better part of the day, mingling with the boys of the town all you could, and learning if any underhand doings were being engineered among the tough element outside of the scouts?" "That's what," replied Toby. "And just this afternoon we got on to something by accident that we thought ought to be reported to headquarters. Wanted to phone it, but they're repairing the wire between here and Fairfield, and we had to try another way. So we hit up a hot pace and came over direct on our machines; though of course we had trouble on the road." "You did the right thing, Number Four," remarked Elmer. "And now, tell us what you learned. Is there any sign of treachery afoot?" "Just that, as sure as you live!" cried Nat, unable to hold himself in longer, when he had as much right to be heard as his mate. "They're getting up a scheme to upset all our plans. We didn't hear a breath about it till three, but the fellers in the game had started more'n an hour before." "Meaning to waylay our boys, and put them out of the running?" asked Elmer, showing signs of anger, as well as an eagerness to be moving.